


Where the Sand Meets the Sea

by waterwings



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: A surprising amount of ocean imagery, Alternate Universe, Bodyswap, Comets and Falling Stars, Fluff, Inspired by Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name., Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Red String of Fate, The things they get up to in each other's bodies..., and pink lightening bolts and rainbow tattoos, magic sharing, there's fluff here!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 74,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27814786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterwings/pseuds/waterwings
Summary: Simon is a foster kid in London, desperate to get through today, thank you very much. Tomorrows are for people with better luck than him. Baz is a rich Pitch in the tiny town Sandside (as rural as rural can be), whose love for the hometown he hates may be the crux of all of his problems.This is a world where magic has moved on.Where stars fall from the sky.Where time is less a linear progression and more a slow dance.And where Simon and Baz start to switch places, which will—inevitably—change everything.
Relationships: Dev/Niall (Simon Snow), Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 213
Kudos: 185





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arcanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanine/gifts).



> “What do you think of a bodyswap with magic sharing and falling stars?” I said, months and months ago, feeling all insecure and ridiculous. This is for [arcanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanine/pseuds/arcanine), who poured a bunch of love into this project (and me). Thank you for being so lovely. There are a thousand words that could (quite rightly) describe all of the reasons you are a gift, but instead of prattling on, I’m going to hope that the following eighty thousand or so do you justice. 
> 
> I had two amazing betas for this fic: [arcanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanine/pseuds/arcanine) and [annabellelux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabellelux/pseuds/annabellelux), to say I could not have done this without you is a disgusting understatement <3  
> Also, the absolutely stunning [xivz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xivz/pseuds/xivz) drew some breathtaking art [here!](https://xivz.tumblr.com/post/637129312709050368/read-on-ao3/)  
> 

**Baz**

“Prophecies are like mosquitos,” my mother used to say. “They blow in with the summer heat, and then die with the frost.” Five-year-old me old hadn’t understood what she meant.

The House of Pitch kept a collection, of words whispered by ancestors, high on self-importance (and often something else too). Fiona obsessed over them—the way she tells it, so did my mother. Whispers about plucking at the strings of fate, unravelling time, and remaking it in our image. I think my mother believed she could dance through time if she just found the right beat, if someone would only invite her up to the dance floor and teach her the steps.

There was one prophecy, though, in particular. One that my whole family was sure they would see come to fruition.

_And one will come to end us._

_And one will bring his fall_

_Let the greatest power of powers reign_

_May it save us all._

It happened when I was eleven years old. “Magic came back to the world,” Fiona insisted. “All the old families felt it.”

I did feel something. It was like I’d swallowed a lightning bolt that cooked me from the inside out, all of my cells burnt to a crisp. The entire town of Sandside sunk a little farther into the sea that day.

“It’s a disturbance in the force.” Fiona had said. “A big one. It’s a powerful mage, Basil. It’s gotta be.”

“You sound like a Star Wars character,” I’d scoffed, a ' _sarcastic little shit',_ even then.

I wanted to believe it, though. That magic had woken up. That this tiny town and the Pitch’s place in it still meant something. That our centuries’ long preservation of what magic used to be, that our collections and our libraries and our pilgrimage to the Catacombs every year, would mean something.

That the world hadn’t moved on from magic, hadn’t moved on from us.

As it turns out, Fiona was right. So was my mother. But they were also very very wrong.


	2. The Day the Stars Came Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pesky reflections, celestial zippers, and nothing more or less than a beautiful view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who have work-in-progress trauma (it can't just be me!) I want you to feel safe in knowing that this fic is completely written. I'll be doing my absolute darndest to update this weekly on Tuesdays (if I can force myself to keep a schedule) (or more often, because I'm weak). My apologies for the sparse beginning, but I promise, almost every update after this one will have around 5000 words.  
> Love love love!

**Baz**

Sometimes, I see someone else in my reflection. Flashes of blue and tawny skin in the pan.

It’s almost as if…

I am living my life in tandem with someone else?

_Maybe._

As if a ghost is placing a hand on the small of my back and tugging my feet into a waltz I never intended.

_Maybe._

As if my molecules are striving to manifest some kind of potential, but never manage to exist in enough dimensions.

_Closer._

_Once in a while, when I wake up, I find myself crying._

**Simon**

_Once in a while, when I wake up, I’m crying._

There’s a film of dirt across the bathroom mirror; I can still make out my face if I squint. The skin around my eyes is the consistency of puff pastry.

Sometimes, I see someone else looking back at me in the mirror. Smooth skin, a jawline I want to trace with my fingertips.

I don’t know who or how or why, but I know it means something, even if I can’t quite describe what it is.

It’s almost like all of the “what ifs” of my life somehow merged together.

_Maybe._

Almost like the puzzle of my life is one piece short.

_Maybe._

Almost like the possibility of my life was never shaded in.

_Closer._

Whatever it is hits me hardest in the morning. Right after I’ve woken up.

_The dream I must’ve had...I can never remember._

**Baz**

_The dream I must’ve had...I can never recall._

The sensation that I’ve lost something lingers for a long time after I wake up. Almost like the world I travel to when my brain shuts down is greater than the sum of its synapses.

I can feel the dream hiding behind corners, peeking at me from the edge of the frame. Something I know is there, but that I can never see.

_I’m always searching. For something. For someone._

**Simon**

_I’m always searching. For something? For someone_?

Maybe it’s one of those glass half-empty phenomenons. As if the plot points of my life never really added up to much, didn’t generate enough rising action to merit a happy ending.

The ache of unrequited and unknowable.

_The feeling’s been with me, I think, from that day. The day the stars came falling._

**Baz**

_This feeling has possessed me, I think, from that day. That day when the stars came falling._

When the comet tore open the sky, an astronomical wonder of purples and greens, a glimpse at the secrets of the universe.

It was a celestial zipper, something our eyes were never meant to see.

White, turquoise, purple and blue, the aurora borealis made into a watercolour painting, but a thousand times brighter and with an intentionality that made my heart ache. The hand of something bigger, drawing lines of colour and magic and madness all across the horizon.

It was star stuff closing in.

It was a part of the universe that has no business being this close.

It was magic. Unquestionably.

I remember the wind tossing my hair around my face as I reached up to try and touch it. As if it were possible to shake hands with god.

_It was almost as if it were a scene from a dream._

**Simon**

_It was almost like something out of a dream._

That day, as the wind snuck its cold fingers through my curls, I felt like the world was exploding, and I reached up to try and touch it. Like whatever fucked up magic lived inside of me was up there too, crashing through the atmosphere. It was a hole I couldn’t fill. It felt like the home I couldn’t find.

Not a hole. Not a dream. Not a home.

_It was nothing more, nothing less, than a beautiful view._

**Baz**

Not a dream or a feeling or a parade of ghosts. _It was nothing more or less than a beautiful view._


	3. The World Has Moved on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confidence, silvery coattails, and a world that has moved on from magic.

**Baz, as himself**

Confidence is an illusion. A false god, at whose mantle I tithe excessively.

I hope for a return on investment.

It’s easier to stand outside the door to my father’s office than to go inside. There's a nameplate set into the wood and I let my fingers trace the letters. Malcolm Grimm. (Just Grimm. No trace of Pitch anywhere in sight). _He’s cast off the Pitch._ The gentle suffix held together by memories and an overzealous hyphen.

 _It was never going to keep him tethered._ The dash. Or the memories. Not after she died and he left.

 _Confidence_. I’m pretending that I have it. I knock.

“Come in, Basil.” My father wishes he had a voice that boomed. It grumbles, to be sure. But it doesn’t fill a room. He wishes his tenor was a diesel engine, when really he’s barely the sputter of an ignition struggling to turn over.

He compensates (overcompensates) with words, all liquid and smooth. I can feel the awkward social lubrication from here. Repulsive. I push the door open and repress a shudder.

“Hello father.” Fuck, my dread is a living thing.

His desk is a castle, the broad cherry oak a gate to the inner sanctum of his political machinations, bookcases climbing spires behind him, casting long shadows against the morning sun. Does he always need to look as ominous as possible?

 _Compensating. Always compensating._

I don’t remember when cordial slaps on the back and nods down his long nose became our baseline for intimacy.

Maybe it was when he left us on Christmas. The year after she died. It is hard for intimacy to grow when the soil is made of dust.

“I heard from Catherine that you received acceptance letters to Cambridge, Oxford, and UCL,” he says, before I can take my seat.

Of course he’d heard.

Mrs. Avery at the post office must be watching my mail as it comes in. Small town life, small town problems. I’ll need to remind Fiona to have a talk with her about privacy and abuse of public office. Everyone’s scared of Fiona.

“I don’t remember telling you about any potential offers of admission,” I say, imitating my best this-is-none-of-your-concern-especially-since-you-walked-out-on-your-family voice.

He waves his hand, as if swatting away the tedious details of mail fraud and child abandonment like fleas on rotting fruit. “Which are you planning to take?”

I gulp. _Confidence. I have it. Somewhere._ “Right now? None of them.”

His eyebrows disappear into his receding hairline. “None of them,” he says, slowly.

The conversation is on a knife’s edge. I can feel his patience teetering and my nerves tapering to a point. “Right now, yes. That’s the plan.”

“Why—”

“Because that’s what I decided, _father_.” The last word comes out like a swear. Like I’m spitting it back in his face.

Malcolm leans into his elbows, looking down at me even though he’s two inches shorter than I am. “It’s time to grow up, Basilton.”

“Whatever could you mean?” I say. Nerves. Tapering.

“You were never meant to stay in this town.”

“Is that what you really think?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“This isn’t about me, Basilton. It’s about you and the future that you deserve.”

 _A future that closes the door on everything I’ve ever loved. On_ her.

“This place is mag—”

“Don’t!” he says, the volume of his voice starting to climb. “Don’t start with that nonsense.” The tightrope of his patience is so thin, I can barely see it.

“It’s not nonsense.” There are no winners in this fight. We both will leave bleeding. 

“It’s a childish obsession,” he says, and I’m twelve again, watching him shout the same words at Fiona.

“It’s tradition,” I say. _Stay calm, stay calm, stay—_

“It’s a waste.” He’d said that as he slammed the front door, a box in his arms and a bag over his shoulder. He hadn’t come back.

“It’s all that I’ve got left.” I don’t mean for those words to squeak out. Feelings are slippery and I’m tumbling down the slope of their betrayal. “It’s all that’s left of her.”

Can one see disappointment in the slope of a shoulder? In the stiffness of an upper lip?

You can where my father is concerned.

“This isn’t about magic—”

I am not ready to hear a paragraph soliloquizing his stance on magic.

“Father,” I try to interrupt. But his words have started rolling down that fucking slippery slope and he will not be stopped.

“The Pitch’s lost their credibility last century. Magic is a dream. It’s a religion. It's a joke, Basil.” Each word tweezes at the muscle of my heart. “There is no magic here. Your aunt peddles parlour tricks and sells petroleum jelly mixed with food colouring and calls it witchcraft. And your mother,” he says, his voice wavering for the first time since I made the tragic strategic error of walking into his space on his terms. “She’s gone, Basil, and nothing you do or say, no _magic_ ,” he says this last word like it’s the slime on the bottom of a rubbish bin, “is going to bring her back. The world has moved on, and so should you.” Most people speak in broken sentences; my father speaks in paragraphs. Choreographed down to the syllable, in a stream of consciousness so organized, most of his words feel premeditated. 

_The world has moved on._

On that charge, he’s not wrong, but I can’t admit it. Not out loud. Not to him.

“Mum was magic.” I whisper it, my voice cast so low, I’m sure he didn’t hear me.

“Don’t throw your life away, Basil.”

“Taking a gap year doesn’t mean I’m throwing my life away—”

“One year becomes two,” he interrupts. My father, the chronic interrupter, determined to pick apart the ends of my sentences and thread them into his own. “And then three and, by then, you will have forgotten why you wanted to leave in the first place.”

“It won’t be that way for me—”

“This isn’t a discussion,” he says, standing up in his chair and leaning into my space. “You will accept a position at one of the universities that’ve accepted your application, of which I hear the options are diverse. Well done.”

His praise is as empty as his promises.

_Confidence, please come to my aid. Benevolent god beneath whom I throw all of my faith._

“I will not.” _Ah, there you are._ Confidence, answering my call. “This is my decision to make, father. Thank you for your input, but I’m going to make this choice on my—”

“Grow up, Basilton!”

“What I do with my life,” I say, forcing myself to meet his gaze. To stare deep into those soft grey eyes (my eyes) (the one physical demonstration that we share something skin deep). “Is for me to decide.”

I turn on my heel and walk out—I try not to storm. I’m not sure I succeed, but at this point, I have no fucks left to give. 

Daphne’s soft face, genuine and sincere, looks up at me around her monitor. “Basilton, how did it—”

“Oh fuck off, Daphne,” I snap, all of the anger I’m feeling for my father emptying into the next available person.

Even as the vitriol leaves my lips, the aftertaste is regret. Daphne is sweet, even if she is fucking my father in secret. Widowed mayoral candidates are more likeable if they’re still perceived as grieving. Engaging in the beast with two backs does nothing to encourage the sympathy sentiment. 

“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need a lift, dear,” she whispers as I storm out through the front doors of the town hall.

I catch the words before even more slip through my teeth and bite the inside of my cheek instead. Better no words than nasty ones—at least where Daphne is concerned. I leave her sitting at her desk, slightly wounded, mouth parted, waiting for me to come back so that she can try to make everything better.

She can’t. And I don’t want her to keep trying.

_Fuck you, Malcolm. Fuck you straight to hell._

I try to pretend that I’m walking calmly to the Jaguar (F type, Eiger Grey, lovely) in the lot. An extravagant Christmas gift when I turned sixteen that arrived unannounced in the drive overnight. I was up one vehicle and down one father figure, which was an equation I liked just fine (I still do).

_It should’ve been him._

_It should’ve._

I’ve never told him that. But I’ve thought it. A thousand times. In the ugliest places. On the days I need someone to hate. On those days, he’s an easy target. 

“What did daddy Grimm want?” Dev says, smiling up at me, his arm draped over the open window.

“Nothing,” I say. My voice has had its wings clipped. _Everything._

Just because he decided to let her go, doesn’t mean that I have to do the same.

_Even though some days I want to. To run away to London and never look back._

It’s a cataclysm of inconvenience, hating your deadbeat father and loving your dead mum. Especially when the deadbeat in question is begging you to do something that, deep down, you actually want. I want university and London and more than this town slowly falling into the sea. Especially when the dead mum in question is a titan of this place, a woman made of magic, who was convinced she could dance through time if she paged through the history of Sandside long enough.

“It’s never nothing with Malcolm,” Dev says, and he would know. My cousin knows the interior of my family drama well; he’s read every line of that shitty story.

He’s right, but I don’t tell him that. Shame is not an emotion that throws its weight around or pitches a fit. It doesn’t wield the biggest hammer or cut tears from my eyes. But when it comes to self-loathing, shame is second to none. Shame, for not being strong enough to stare into those grey eyes—his grey eyes. My grey eyes—and let the words come tumbling out. _You left us._

“It’s gonna be like that, is it?” Dev says after a minute of silence and I jerk the Jag out of the spot onto the gravel road.

I grind my teeth and stare out at the horizon, watching puffs of dust and gravel swirl in the wind.

_Yes. Yes it is._

I dump Dev in a ditch by the side of the road. The school car park is gravel washboard and plays my Jag’s suspension like a xylophone—I’m not driving over that terrain unless it is absolutely necessary. 

“You’re leaving me here?” Dev says, as I reach over and open his door for him.

“Astute observation,” I say, with more venom that I intend. “An open door, and he thinks I want him to get out.”

“Oh fuck off…wait,” he says, words stumbling over thoughts. “You’re skipping class?”

“Those powers of deduction you have—”

“You?” He appears unfazed by my snark. “You don’t…this isn’t…it’s not a thing you do.” He’s gesticulating wildly and I have no time for it.

I try to keep my eyes from rolling. “I contain multitudes. Now get the fuck out of my car.”

Something that looks suspiciously like concern twists Dev’s face into strange shapes, but he eventually concedes, slamming my passenger door with enough force to make me cringe. _If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times,_ “Don’t slam the—”

“The door. Yes mum, I know.” He leans in through the open window. “Are you sure about this? Was Malcolm really that—”

I start to drive away, nearly taking Dev’s upper body with me.

“Oy! You could use your words for once…” His voice fades as I speed away, tires kicking rocks up in their wake.

The phrase _rolling hills_ could have been coined here. Logophiles traversing the continent in search of new words could have stood on the brink of the Lake District and looked out over an ocean of green and christened the expression there and then. I lean my head back into the seat and let the open air wash over my face, in the hopes it can exfoliate the venom I feel building under my skin.

I don’t know where I’m going until I’m halfway there.

The Catacombs always tug at my navel, dragging me to their creepy doorstep, when things feel overwhelming. Maybe it’s that infantile desire to hug my mother again, to feel her hold me when the world becomes too much. Or maybe I just want to see her, and this is the closest thing.

I have to leave Sandside to get there, and that suits me just fine.

Sandside is a town aptly named; it’s perched on the edge of the water, surrounded by the persistent waves of the River Kent, that paw greedily (ceaselessly) at its shores. The world has moved on, and it’s trying to take us with it.

I should hate Sandside—most days I _do_ hate it. Crowley, there’s so many reasons, it almost feels wrong to recount them all—like arguing about moral relativism with a toddler. It’s just too easy.

I’m gobbling up pavement like it’s going out of style, but I don’t care. Today, I’ll race the breeze and count off the reasons I hate this fucking life in this fucking town and pretend that I’m not wallowing like some caricature of teenage rebellion against my fairweather father.

The most interesting thing to happen in Sandside was also the first thing. They say it was a comet that carved the face of the countryside asunder. Hundreds of years ago, the stars sent a messenger from outer space. The heavens collided with this tiny place and created something new.

It’s been downhill from there.

There’s also no theatre.

No café.

Two pubs, for some reason.

No one interesting.

Passive homophobia, with a rural tang.

Too many people who have lived in too few places: they were born here and plan to die here.

Too many more who have watched their family do this same dance for generations.

I sigh, looking out over the hills I’m slowly cresting, and pretend that someone other than the wind can hear my resignation.

I hate Sandside, but I love it just as much. Maybe more. And this is the crux of the thing, the problem that I can’t solve.

Because it’s the only place with magic left in the world, and that definitely counts for something. That single item in the Pros column is going to be enough to hold onto me—to keep me in this dance with magic and time. 

I am a Pitch. My mother used to say it was a name with a long memory, that could catch up with the ghosts of history, cling to their silvery coattails, and force them to stand still.

We were magic.

I shift from into fifth with more force than is necessary, and press my foot to the floor. The Jag roars, revving its exertion for the hills to hear. I’m cresting the hill that leads out of town and into territory not so much uncharted as uninhabited.

The rumour mill is centuries old, and it’s still churning out this specific reputation.

We used to be mages.

Mages who, with a passing interest and the flick of their wrist, could dance through time. A Pitch could turn back time, could unravel history and remake it. We could part the veil between this world and the next. We could even tug our loved ones out of the grave.

_Until the world moved on._

My father’s words are as painful as they are true. As much as Fiona will refute it and I don’t want to admit it, Malcolm is right: there’s no magic left. Not for generations. Not for anyone.

I ease up on the gas and coast down the hill, letting the wind blow my hair wild. We’re almost there now.

 _“I will not have my wife buried in the middle of nowhere.”_ Father had been adamant. But so had Fiona, and no one fucks with Fiona. Especially not when it concerns her dead sister.

 _“It’s not nowhere, Malcolm,”_ Fiona spat. Fiona spent most of the days after she died spitting at father. _“It’s tradition.”_

_“It’s morbid.”_

_“It’s what she would’ve wanted. If you’d bothered to pay any attention, you would know that.”_

Grief will make you mean, and Fiona was mean to begin with.

Fiona prevailed in the end—I think he knew she would—and we buried my mother in Catacombs, like every Pitch before her, “ _and every one that will come after, you hear me?_ ” Fiona had said, as we cried in the car on our way back that cloudy Tuesday, all those years ago.

I turn off the main drag and down a mossy path just wide enough for a single car. It’s a left turn that’s easy to miss, impossible to find unless you know where to look.

 _“You take a left turn into a place where magic lived,”_ my mother had said the first time she brought me here. As I bounce up and down in the uneven ruts of the road, past and present start to blur.

 _“They used to teach mages how to cast. It was a school of magic,”_ my mother had said. I bounced on her knee in the passenger’s seat as Fiona roared down the lane, driving with the abandon of someone with Dr Martens and a heavy foot.

 _“How do you know, though?”_ I’d asked. _“There’s nothing left.”_

The bumps would send me crashing up into the roof, skull thunking against interior, and I whooped with the abandon of a boy who hadn’t yet lost his mother.

 _“There’s the Catacombs,”_ my mother would say, smoothing my hair back and pressing a kiss to my forehead.

 _“Tombs,_ ” I would argue. _“The basement! All the good stuff got wiped out. The rest is in ruins.”_

 _“Ruins are just history reminding us it was here,”_ my mum had whispered. I swear, the trees bowed for her. She was just that kind of person. 

I can still hear Fiona’s roar as we would round the bend. _“This is our place, little Pitch. It’s like coming home.”_

The Jag bursts through the trees and out into the clearing. I can smell the grass under the tires and I can finally breathe.

Fiona still brings me back here sometimes. “ _To scavenge for clues_ ,” she will say, as if every inch of this ancient place hasn’t already had the fingers of a generation’s worth of Pitches comb its every surface. Desperate for some relic of the magic that used to live here.

_Magic is a dream. It’s a religion. It’s a joke._

I kick lightly at a stray rock and walk through the clearing into the ruins proper.

I see it now for what it is—I know that I’m walking through a graveyard. The bones of buildings heave up out of the green, sleeping giants blanketed in so much time. 

The world moving on.

Even when the sky’s stuffed up and overcast, the greens here are still wild. I walk with the memories of her.

_“You were made for the world, little puff. And it’s not ready for you.”_

_“But what if the world’s too big?”_

_“Well, then you’ll be big too.”_

Usually, I wander down into the Catacombs, revelling in the dust and the dank. Today, though, I wander up the hill and settle down on the edge of the world.

A decade ago, before fires and university acceptance letters, my mother would shout at me if I wandered up this way. Not in anger, but in that concerned tone of a parent afraid that their child will fall over a ledge that thrusts a thousand miles up out of the sea.

 _“I like to think they built the home of magic at the edge of the world,”_ Fiona would say and my mother would laugh. It was a rumbling laugh—all belly—until she saw me wandering towards that edge.

I look down at it now, the memories of something full-throated and good echoing in my ears. It’s not a thousand miles tall. It’s not even a sheer drop. More of a gently rocky descent into the sea.

I flick the portable radio on (it’s already tuned to the only station you can pick up out here) and drop it into the weeds.

**_“A comet that comes only once every 1200 years will finally be headed our way in a month. The comet will be visible to the naked eye for several days once it approaches the earth. Prepare for the celestial show of the millennium.”_ **

It’s a local station from Kendal, a dozen or so miles away, and the only frequency that finds any purchase in these parts. (They also have the only edible take-out for miles. Sporting an all vegetarian menu, which most of the people from Sandside find unsavoury, but I find hilarious).

My phone, I know without checking, is dead in my pocket.

 _“It’s the magic,”_ Fiona insists. _“Or at least, what’s left of it. Think of it like a chemical spill. The world remembers.”_ My aunt is a heretic, preaching a message in diametric opposition to my father’s insistence that “ _there is no magic here.”_

I let my eyes go slack, let my fingers trace the lines of the red cord in my hair, and just stare. The hills roll their shoulders and I try to find the words to explain why he’s never been more wrong.

_Because I’ve felt it father. Didn’t I tell you. That, once, I made fire with my bare hands?_

No point telling him that. He’d never believe me.

_Because I can feel it thrumming in my veins when I come here._

He hasn’t been back since her funeral. There’s nothing left for him out in the wild.

_Because she was magic and she is here, and that should be enough._

I wish that these were words I could speak to life. Swallow that fucking shame and say what I mean. I know that I won’t, will probably never look him in the face and speak this truth—mostly for fear he wouldn’t care.

_The world may have moved on, father, but I can’t believe it took you with it._


	4. Too Many Thoughts, Too Many Fists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taps on the pavement, dragons you can slay, and bile (a nothing substance. A shrug. The thing you produce when you've got nothing left to give).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends. There's a short description of child abuse in this chapter. If this is triggering for you, the section starts with, "More looks. Eyes like screwdrivers..." and ends with "Back and back and back. Like I’m dancing..." Please only read stuff that makes you comfy and stay well <3

**Simon, as himself**

Cheap trainers slap against pavement. I can hear them, tap tap taps echoing off the sloppy walls of the back alley.

They’re chasing me. Four of them at least. The monsters come in packs these days. Always with a dry sucking feeling. I can taste it in my mouth, mingling with spit and blood.

I hate when they chase me. Not because I’m scared of what will happen when they catch up. I know what will happen. It’s the same story every time. With the same beginning, middle, and end.

The beginning always starts like this. Running. Sometimes it can end here. I’ll stumble into a hiding place or luck into some adult with a modicum of authority, or manage to dive through a stray maintenance door. But I’m not usually that lucky.

Which leads to the middle.

_To right about now._

I feel fingers find purchase; some thick fist is mashing into my hair and squeezing the curls by the roots. The rest of my body jerks to a messy stop, neck snapping taught, knees buckling.

Something firm and fist shaped hits my ribs, and the air rushes out in a whoosh—like a screen door slamming shut on a windy afternoon.

You’d think that hurting people with your fists would’ve gone out of style. There’re a thousand new tools designed to hurt—it’s the 21st fucking century.

Thumbs make for excellent emotional dissection. _They’re just letters. Just the product of vicious keystrokes. It’s just the internet, and shouting in there shouldn’t hurt so bad._ It’s not home; it’s not even real. Except that’s where everyone lives these days, and it kind of is.

Except for me. I refuse to play. My flip phone thumps against my side, deep in a pocket somewhere.

_I could try to call someone._

That’s a lark, though, and I know it better than most. There’s no one to call. And I don’t want to draw attention. Not to what my magic makes people do.

I’m on the ground now. ( _When did I get on the ground_?) I try to remember the basics. Arms up. Protect my face.

It should hurt and I know, somewhere in the part of me that is still paying attention, my body should be screaming. But pain, when it’s coming from all sides, stops making sense. It becomes the medium in which I live; nothing else exists.

_It’s not their fault_ , I think, over and over again. Because if I forget that, I might go off. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Not now.

Not ever again.

My magic drives people mad. That's what I call it. Magic. I didn’t have any other words that made sense. There isn’t exactly a Wikipedia page for “it feels like the universe collapsed in on itself and decided to live inside my chest.” (At least, there wasn’t when I first typed it into Google.) It felt like I was a cup and my magic was a waterfall, and there was no way I could possibly contain it.

Something sharp connects with the back of my head and, for a second, my vision goes black. I try to swim through the pain. To ride the wave until they get bored or whatever my magic does to them starts to fade.

No one used to hurt me before. But then I went off. And that changed everything. They usually leave me alone if I can keep it under my skin. Which I never can. Not at school. Or at home. Or now.

_Fuck._

I feel my magic rising to the surface.

_Just don’t go off._

An ocean boiling over.

_Just don’t_

rolling waves

_go_

that would peel the skin off of their bones

_off._

I curl into the smallest version of myself—arms, folding into legs, folding into a ball of nothing on the pavement. Bite down on the insides of my cheeks, tasting blood and trying to hold on to it, to swallow the violence, to gulp down the whole fucking ocean in a single swallow.

_Don’t go off. Please. Not this time._

“C’mon,” someone grunts above me and I realize that they’ve stopped moving. “Let’s go.”

“What—”

“Let’s go home.”

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t recognize the voices or the faces, the shoes or the angry hands. Some people are better at dealing with my magic ( _it’s my magic that makes them do this)_. It doesn’t always escalate or end in bruises and blood.

That was Victor I think…and maybe Alex?

They could’ve been friends ( _It’s my magic that makes them this way.)_ I curl inward, trying to stop my body from shaking. _(It could’ve been different.)_ It’s a futile thing.

It always ends like this. Cheap trainers slapping against pavement, moving away, tap tap taps disappearing into the distance. And the next day, if they remember what happened, no one shows it. Friendly slaps on the back in the changing rooms, laughter at lunch, casual nods and appropriate eye contact.

It helps, knowing it’s my magic. ( _It’s got to be_.)

I can’t get up. Not now. Not yet. For just a second, I lean into the emotions bubbling to the surface. That feeling of not having enough fists. Of wishing you had a fist for every person who would try to hurt you. But we’re born with two and, for me, two never seems to be enough. 

This is always how it ends. I used to fight back. To give as good as I got and let the fucking rage building in my chest just unleash. It felt good, in that way that volcanoes probably feel good, spurting their lava all over the place.

The pavement’s left a kiss on my palm, probably from when I fell. It’s a goopy wound, raw and bleeding. The red matches the cord on my wrist. I let my fingers trace the pattern, try to follow the threads as they twist and turn. And for a while, that’s enough. To just feel and breathe through the pain.

Like holding hands with a ghost.

But the world won’t stop moving (not for me anyway), so, eventually, I push myself to my feet and wander the rest of the way to school. With any luck, I’ll make it just in time for my first lesson.

…

I did not make it in time for first lesson.

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Snow.”

Mrs. Possibelf’s eyebrows are a living thing, as expressive as the lips that form her sentences. Today, they’re scrunched together, two caterpillars using their bodies to explain to me exactly how disappointed she is.

“You’re late.”

“Yup,” I mumble, shuffling down the long line of desks to my seat. Penny is looking up at me as I skulk down the row towards her and I can feel her hair vibrating with curiosity—the flyaways are practically antennae, dialled in to the subtleties of my mood (which is currently pretty shitty). Penny knows me like no one else.

“And without your books?” _Possibelf is still talking._

“Uh, sorry ma’am.” _Fuck, no idea where those are._

Her eyebrows twist up into something less disappointed and more concerned. “I’ll see you after class Mr. Snow, to discuss this further.”

Of course she would.

…

The desks are empty now. Penny squeezed my arm on her way out, giving me her best I-love-you-even-though-you're-an-idiot look. I’m not worried—not really. I like Possibelf and I’m pretty sure she likes me. It makes the disappointment I see in her eyes right now sting, but doesn’t inspire fear.

“How many times have you had a teacher tell you that you’re underperforming?”

She cradles her chin between her hands, eyebrows raised and ready, and waits for me to answer.

I don’t have a ton of memories from when I was a kid. One of my social workers said it’s something about repressed trauma and my brain trying to cope with stress. I told her, when shit gets me down, I just _don’t_ think. Thinking is like stretching, pushing aching limbs just over the edge of what I can bear. It hurts like a bitch.

I’d rather just _not_. Absence. Emergency exit doors. The clean way a white board shines after it’s been wiped clean.

That’s me.

What I don’t think about can’t hurt me.

My mind is a lost and found of stray lessons. I bounced between schools so much that any semblance of an organized curriculum disintegrated. I don’t actually know exactly when some variation of the “problem child” label was stamped onto my academic record; if I had to guess, I would look to Year 5.

It’s one of the few memories I do have from back then. Details tattooed across my mind’s eye.

It was the first time I went off.

“Dunno,” I say, bouncing from foot to foot. “Probably started when I was ten, I guess.”

Ten years old and a mess.

I’d liked to lean back in my chair, had savoured how moving quelled the feverish jitters, as the plastic chair sailed backwards. A balancing act on wooden legs.

The teacher was lecturing about some book I hadn’t managed to read.

The chair came crashing down, front legs smashing into the ceramic tile.

Everyone turned to look. But this was fifth grade, I’d changed schools three times that year, and ten-year-old me didn’t care about looks or whispers or friends.

Back back back I soared. I liked the way it felt. To be on the precipice of something. To be on the very edge of falling, pitching into the unknown.

And then catching myself just in time.

And soaring forward. Smack into the tile.

More looks. Eyes like screwdrivers into my skin (someone did that to me in one of my placements. And I didn’t think much of it, because it hurt less than the cigarettes and the way they smelled when they used my skin to put them out).

Back and back and back. Like I’m dancing on a tightrope. Like I’m flying.

And down.

“May I use the washroom?” I don’t remember the raised hand. I don’t remember who took the long way around the classroom on their way out the door. My body was present in that classroom, but my mind was anywhere else. 

Which is why I don’t remember the hand or the name, the voice or the face.

I do remember feeling my body dangling precariously on the chair’s tippy toes.

I remember a swift kick.

And then I was falling in earnest, tumbling to the floor in a mess of limbs and wooden legs and human ones.

It wasn’t the pain (I’d known worse) and it wasn’t even the embarrassment (everyone laughed, those mean little laughs you don’t expect to come out of the mouths of young kids).

I remember the heat in my cheeks and the tears in my eyes and the pain in my arse. Underneath the tangle of shame and loneliness and what would prove later to be a bruised tail bone, though, something new was waking up. 

Maybe the shock knocked it loose. Maybe it was stress or the convergence of every bad thing in what had shaped up to be the worst year of my life, into this one very public debacle. Maybe it was just what magic did to kids sometimes. I don't know. Don’t think I ever will.

What I do know is that someone pulled the plug on my fucking soul and let the magic out. A waterfall of heat and smoke, thick and electric. 

I couldn’t open my mouth. 

I couldn’t warn them.

The door was open and my magic surged, an ocean trying to cram its way through a straw. 

My chest exploded into white light. The last thing I remember was the way that everyone just went quiet.

_That’s nice,_ I thought, _t_ _hey stopped laughing,_ before blacking out.

No one died that day. That comforts me sometimes. That I didn’t want to hurt people. That I still don’t. Even when it feels like I do.

Six hundred kids, teachers, support staff (even the pet caterpillars in the first grade classroom) all found themselves in the middle of a car park in February with no memories of how they’d all gotten there. (I _t was me_ , I realized, even then. _I did that_.)

Hard lessons were learned at eleven. That my magic could do things. And it was dangerous.

There was nothing but a crater where there had once been a school, even years later. Every building, every classroom, every brick, had been turned to dust. _It was me. I did that._

“I was eleven,” I say, forcing myself to stare at Possiblef and her stupid eyebrows. “And it just got worse from there.”

Possibelf looks down at me. “Simon, pretend you had the grades to do whatever you want—

“I don’t—

“I know, but pretend that you do.” I try not to growl. I’m not keen to live in her fantasy world, however nice it may look from here. “What would you want?”

“What do you mean, what would I want?” I’m stalling and she knows it.

“To do. After you graduate.”

I think about my sketchbook, about the pages that line my walls, every inch covered in buildings and the sprawl of the city. Bringing the outside in. 

“Dunno,” I say, trying to pretend that this noncommittal answer has any truth to it. “Never really thought about it.”

“Oh, stop with the poor-orphan-me nonsense,” she snaps. Her eyebrows are serious and so is she. “It’s horse shit, as far as I’m concerned.”

_Did Miss Possibelf just say, “horse shit”?_

“I’ve seen your drawings and your physics scores. If you started to take some of the other subjects seriously, you could do it. It’s not too late to apply for admission in the fall.”

“I can’t—”

“Stop making excuses, Simon. They’re not flattering.”

Ouch. Possibelf means business today.

I open my mouth, unsure as I do of what words I want to come out.

“That will be all,” she says, efficient in her dismissal. I can tell she wants it to be enough.

I spend the rest of the day in an argument with myself—thoughts yelling at other thoughts.

_You’re not worth it._

_You’re not worth the time she took to tell you off._

And.

_Could there be something more than this?_

_More than this dance I do on top of a thousand eggshells, just waiting for the world to crack._

And.

_You can’t._

_You won’t._

_You’re nothing._

_Am I?_

When my last class filters out, I dodge Penny’s prying eyes—too many thoughts, too many fists—and dip into the pitch behind the buildings.

I’ve got an hour to kill before my shift at the restaurant.

Home isn’t an option right now, not after what happened this morning. The monsters (that’s how I think about them. My magic sending monsters at me) come in waves. They might still want another round, another piece. Best to play it safe.

Which is why I go looking for Ebb.

I find her behind the double doors of the school gym, with long black mats hanging off the football goalposts, beating them with the back end of a broomstick.

Dust is billowing across the open fields, twisting dirty paths along the contours of the wind. I watch the puffs disappear into the distance.

“Ebb!” I holler down to her, trying to coax my body into a soft jog. My ribs creak in protest.

Ebb’s six foot something is impossible to miss, a sharp pen mark against the picturesque afternoon. She looks around, and the wind blows some of the dirt back into her face. 

“Hey-” she coughs, “Simon!” Her arms open in welcome, as if waiting for a hug.

“Hey Ebb, you have any idea where I can find my…” I toss a line into my swirling sea of thoughts. “My binder, maybe my copy of Othello, and my Bio textbook?”

“I can,” she says, her voice soft and prodding—how she does both is kinda a mystery to me. “But you’re gonna tell me what got your face all twisted and your guts pounded like these mats I’m cleaning.”

“Possibelf chewed me out,” I grumble, dodging her question.

Ebb looks down at me, and there’s something in her face that makes my insides want to fall apart.

“You’re limping, kiddo,” she says, laying one of her large hands on my shoulder—her touch is as soft as her voice. “And, as much as your company’s some of the best around this place, feels to me like you’re hiding from something.”

In another life, she would’ve been a counsellor (Or a shepherd.) (I don’t think that woman has ever led me astray.) Ebb's one of the only people who my magic can’t seem to touch. No matter how long I sit next to her, stumbling over my thoughts.

“I wouldn’t call it hiding—”

“Don’t get all cagey with your words.”

“Okay, maybe it’s a little bit hiding.” I kick at the grass, trying to turn up a tuft of the greying grass.

“Who was it this time?”

“Does it matter?”

Ebb shrugs. “I dunno. Does to me.”

My sigh feels like the end of a season. “Alex I think. And Victor. Didn’t really see the other ones.”

“Oh Simon—”

“No pity Ebb. Not today.”

“I—”

“I just. Don’t know what to do. I don’t wanna hurt them. But they keep coming. They just keep coming, and I’m so scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That I’m gonna do something I can’t take back.”

“They’re not dragons you can slay, Simon. They’re just kids.”

_They don’t feel like kids. Not when their eyes are glazed and they’re hitting me like they can’t stop, like they won’t ever stop. And that dry sucking feeling._

“I just…I need this part of my life to be over, y’know?”

“Simon,” she says, laying one of her large hands on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t wish away time. It’s a non-renewable resource.”

I try not to shrug away from the touch. “Sometimes, I just want to run away to a tiny town and just hide in the hills where no one can find me. Where my mag—where I don’t bother anyone.” 

Any normal person would’ve told me that I wasn’t a bother. That I was being silly and that I could make a home right here if I just put my mind to it. But that’s not Ebb. Never has been. “You could get a couple of goats?” she says instead, as this is the most obvious thing to add to the conversation.

“Goats?” I can’t help but laugh, even if it makes my sides split open.

“What’s wrong with goats?”

I start to open my mouth, but the look on Ebb's face is so serious, so fucking pensive as she stares out over the football pitch, I don’t have the heart to tease her.

“Nothing. I’m sure you’d make an excellent goat keeper.”

“It’s called a goatherd Simon,” she says, every one of her six feet sincere.

“Uh huh,” I say instead. “You got an extra…” I look at her sleeves, rolled up and ready to pummel. “Broom? To beat that mat with?”

Ebb looks around, as if scouring the scene for a mop or a squeegee. “No, don’t look like it. Maybe you could go fetch a stick.”

My sighs could power a wind turbine. “Sure thing, Ebb.”

By the time we’ve beaten the mats within an inch of their moldy lives, the sun has started to set on the horizon. Soft bronze flits like apprehensive fingers over the lawn.

Ebb gently leads me back through my day, picking my Othello up off the counter of the second-floor bathroom, finding pieces of my binder scattered across the back of Bellamy’s classroom. My bio textbook remains lost, but it will work its way back to Ebb—like a remote control wedged between the nebulous void of couch cushions. 

…

“Your shirt’s not ironed.”

_Fuck._

“Why isn’t your shirt ironed?”

Words crowd my mouth, but none make an exit. So I shrug.

“We’ve been through this, Simon.”

_We have._

“More than once.”

_I can’t use the iron, miss. I tried the first time you wrote me up. I think the exact word you used was "dishevelled." Davy told me that I was using his stuff, and then the cheap white shirt I’ve actually managed to afford disappeared. And then showed up in my room with a big black iron shaped burn right in the middle._

_And he'd asked me, “How did that happen, Simon?” The knowledge of exactly what had happened embers behind his eyes._

_I know._

_He knows I know._

_And yet._

_“Dunno sir," I'd answered, because it a shirt is not a hill worth dying on._

_“The lesson here,” he’d said, moustache quivering, “is that it’s best not to touch my appliances then, correct?”_

“I’ll do better next time,” I say to my manager, striving to keep my tones neutral.

Her sigh is a sad little thing. “I’m sure you will,” she says, and walks away, leaving me in a sea of stainless steel, feeling like I’m not enough.

“Don’t worry about her,” someone says, and I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s a gentle touch that doesn’t demand anything from me and I would know it anywhere.

_Agatha._

My god, she’s talking to me.

I know it’s hopeless, that she’s more likely to go out with a cardboard cutout than with me, but when her pale golden hair swishes around her long neck, I feel my kneecaps melt and start to believe, if only for that split second, that everything is alright for now.

Fuck, my mouth is hanging open and I haven’t said anything. “Uh…”

That’s all that comes out. A grunt in the face of a goddess.

“You alright Simon?” Agatha is made of fine lines. Her shirt is always perfectly smooth, tucked into a pair of high waisted black slacks, her hair loose and tossed over one shoulder.

“Ye-yeah,” I stutter. “Just…just tired is all.”

She gives my shoulder a soft squeeze.

“Kelsey just seated someone in your section. Nice looking older couple. But don’t make them wait too long, or the lady will send her soup back.”

“Why?”

“She’s spitey like that.”

A laugh sneaks out. “Thanks Aggie.”

Agatha’s eyebrows shoot up. _Shit_. That’s less of a nickname and more of a daydream that I’ve never spoken aloud and now she knows and…

_Fuck_.

“Right,” she says, her smile like weak tea. “Well, best get to it then?”

“Yeah. Right.”

A cardboard cut-out could’ve fielded that conversation better than I did.

Fuck it all to hell.

...

The sounds of the tube are soft and constant all around me—a sure sign that my day is almost over. I love taking the train. I love the way the railroad tracks putter. I love the anonymity of it, and that, in a crowd so large, I’m never alone.

Its doors are always open and, on those days when I’ve had nowhere else to go, that kind of dependability is everything. 

I never complain about the tube because it always shows up when I need it to.

I’m not sure if it’s Possibelf and her meddling good intentions or the monsters from this morning, but the sediment of years and years of shit memories are starting to swirl. I feel bile in the back of my throat and try to swallow it down.

Bile looks weird in the sink. Every day of Year 3, I would throw up before class. Every fucking day. Bile is a nothing substance. It is the thing you produce when you've got nothing left to give.

The teacher (name’s gone. Guess I managed to blot that detail from the record of my life) would have us all stand up.

She would hold a stack of yesterday’s homework in her hands.

She would go through each page, one by one.

“Annie Smith.” Not my name. Annie would get to sit down.

I remember standing there, the nausea squeezing my internal organs.

“Joshua Gregotts.” Still not my name.

My self-confidence folded into the smallest possible version of itself. You didn’t get to sit down until she called your name.

“Kyle Ellis.” It would never be my name.

And if she didn’t call you—

Some days, I was the only one left standing.

“Simon,” she would say. I don’t remember her name, but I do remember her eyes. They were set deep in her face, supported by the firm lines of middle age. “Where is your assignment?”

I couldn’t open my mouth. If I tried, I would throw up. The nothingness of bile would come rushing out of me, would dissolve the whole fucking classroom with the acidity of my despair.

I couldn’t speak. So I shrugged.

“A shrug is not a sentence, Mr. Snow,” she would say. “Why were you unable to produce a completed assignment when everyone you see sitting around you found the time?”

_There was no one to help me, no one to sit me down and teach me spelling rules or the order of operations, or the i came before e except after c. There was just a room in a home. And nothing else._

I couldn’t hold on to the idea. To the concept that I had something assigned and that I needed to remember to come back to it. It was like ideas and deadlines and memories were fireflies, blinking in and out of existence. I couldn’t catch them. Couldn’t hold them in my hands.

Eight-year-old me didn’t have any of those words. All I had was bile. And so I would shrug again.

The train settles and I realize it’s my station. I try to shake off the memory as I step onto the platform and the night air brushes against my cheeks, but it’s a sticky thing. 

Low-income housing sags around me the closer I get to our building. Giant hulking blocks of flats lean against one another, shrugging their shoulders at that state the world has left them. The evidence of exhaustion is all over their faces, unwashed grey stucco, crumbling stairs and balconies packed with clutter and lost things.

That’s how Davy sees me—as a lost thing, cluttering up his flat. The check from social services pays most of his rent.

It could be worse. It has been worse.

“You’re late.” Davy’s voice

I shrug. With Davy, less is always more.

I’ve been with him for almost three years now. We communicate mostly in monosyllables. I like that just fine. 

My social workers used to talk about my life like I was a character in the Canterbury tales. “You’re going on an adventure. Gaining new experiences,” they’d say, trying to rationalize every placement breakdown, every new school, every shitty room in every shitty group home. And I believed them for a while.

But you can only pretend that cheap plastic garbage bags are the kit of a chosen one on an adventure for so long. Fairytales are the emergency parachutes for people who can’t handle the hand life’s dealt them. I’ve stopped pretending.

The truth is, that each new move takes a piece of me. That I’m losing all of my pieces. That soon, I’ll just be this empty hole, a gaping pit of absence that’s lost everything about them that is good and right. 

That I’ll need someone to pour everything they are into me and that it won’t be enough. That all I’ll ever want is to just want to be full.

_That, after the world has finished with me, I’ll be what’s left when they’re done. And it isn’t enough._

“Straight to your room.”

“Yup.”

I’m dead on my feet and sleep is coming for me the moment I hit the sheets. I can usually feel it tiptoeing into my room and wrapping the dark up like a Christmas gift.

Tonight, the first thing I see is a boy. With long dark hair. It feels like I’m looking at him without glasses, through a frosted window. He’s far away, something vague. 

_I need him closer._

I feel like I’m treading through something cold and thick. Pushing back a veil, made of moisture and memories.

The features come into focus, each one clearer as I force my dream legs to move.

Cheekbones casting elegant lines that I want to trace with my fingertips. A full mouth, that’s smoothed into something thoughtful.

_Fucking hell._

For those first few seconds, he’s unguarded. There’s something easy in the lines of his face, that precious expression that only peeks out when no one is looking. Dreamy and…beautiful.

His downturned chin tilts up, and I look into those grey eyes for the first time. He sees me and I see him and there’s nothing between us.

_Holy shit._

His guard is down. I know it, cause I see it go up just as quick.

The sharp edges start to feel that way—I wonder if I imagined the softness. He’s like six feet of steel. He’s plexiglass and impenetrability.

“Are you dancing alone?” he asks, and I don’t know if I've ever been so confused.

“Can you see me?” I can’t help it. I gasp.

“I don’t…I don’t know,” he whispers.

It’s almost like we’re the same person. Like he can feel what’s inside me and I can feel what’s inside him. Like I’m seeing out of his eyes, feeling what he’s feeling. It’s a mind fuck.

And then he’s gone. But I can’t shake the way that he looked at me. Those eyes.

Grey.

Like the pavement.

I want to remember this.

_Let me keep him. Please let me keep him._


	5. Please Let Me Keep Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up in another person's body, judgy peafowl, fucking flip phones, and bringing the outside in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bodyswap is finally here. Forgive me. It is ridiculous.

**Baz, as Simon**

Everyone says that dreams slip away like water, disappearing through the cracks between fingers before you decide to keep them. For most of my dreams, I would’ve accepted this metaphor as generalizable.

But not tonight.

This dream is less like a pool of water cupped in my palms and more like a message carved into wet sand. Each wave that rolls up to the cool lines takes another piece of the dream back with it, away and into the sea. Water slowly eroding definition.

Which is a crime against the natural world, because the man standing before me in this dream is…well, he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

His golden hair looks like it’s longer than he’s used to keeping it, a bit shaggy, curling under his ears and against the neck of his baggy t-shirt. I see him in profile, and I revise my first impression: he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, but he’s sad too. Lonely in a way that only comes out when you’re completely sure that no one is watching, that no one will ever see. When you let the ache inside of you come out. Just a moment. 

Wherever he’s standing, it’s dark down there. Synthetic white light is playing across his features, and I notice the dew in his eyelashes.

I can taste the rain on my tongue as I shift up towards him, can feel moisture clinging to my skin, can smell rocks sweating out a chalky residue. He looks…he looks like he’s dancing.

_Why would he be dancing?_

I don’t know it until I’m there with him, but I’m suddenly certain that I’ve seen him before.

“Are you dancing alone?” I say, and dream boy turns to me, as if my voice were a call he could not resist.

Simple blue eyes. Wide and filled with awe.

“Can you see me?” he asks.

“I don’t…I don’t know,” I whisper.

That’s when the waves come. The tides pulling me out of this place, away from this boy, back to a queen-sized four-poster bed, and a down comforter, and that tranquil thing that passes for familiarity.

Bronze curls smooth in the wet sand, blue eyes are washed away.

_Please don’t go. Don’t take him. Let me keep him. Please, let me keep him._

A foghorn rends the air, honking like a monstrous goose out for revenge.

_What on earth?_

This isn’t my alarm. My alarm is a gentle crescendo of string instruments, that increases in volume and rolls me up and out of sleep with a gentle grace. It is a peaceful transition of power.

If Mordelia left her phone in my room, I’m going to string her up to the eavestroughs by her toes.

_That sound…Why is it still going?_

My eyes are filled with the muck of sleep as I flail around, searching half blind for the source of the noise. I roll over, hands still blindly swiping, and realize too late that there is no bed left on which to roll. I drop like a stone, crashing into the floor with a rib-cracking thud.

_What on earth is going on…_

It is from my back (where I’ve landed), still bleary eyed and more than a little winded, that I realize that I’m looking up at a ceiling that is _not_ my own.

The sweeping four-poster is gone. There are no gargoyles or wardrobes large enough to spirit me away to Narnia. I’ve woken up inside a matchbox—a single bed that’s a foot too short. I’m still wrapped up in the blanket, which lacks voluminous down filling. It’s old and lumpy and I see a stain that looks suspiciously like blood.

“What is…” I start to say, but that voice…the voice coming out of me, is…somehow… _not mine_. “Chomsky,” I say, and hear a stranger speaking into the void. But I can’t seem to stop. “What’s going on?”

My hands wrap around my throat, which is when I notice my forearms.

Spattered in unseemly freckles, less a Jackson Pollock painting, more the work of a toddler with paint and a toothbrush. _These arms aren’t mine._

“What’s happening?” I half groan, half squeak into the room that I’m quickly realizing isn’t mine either.

I catch a glimpse of my legs ( _are they mine?_ ), thick calves poking out of a pair of boxers with tiny peacocks strutting across the fabric.

_Boxers?_

_Peacocks?_

_Who in their right mind wears…_

“Bathroom. I need a mirror. I need—” Fuck a nine-toed-troll, I need to stop speaking, because hearing a stranger’s voice coming out of my mouth is…

I stumble into the toilet, brace myself over the sink, and look up.

Confidence. Bravery. I am praying. _Please, please, please…_

A stranger is looking back at me. I’m so captivated by his details, I almost forget to be afraid. A square chin that insists it should not be trifled with. Wide eyes, such a lovely shade of the bluest blue. Golden curls an absolute disaster of frizz and bedhead.

My chest ( _mine?_ ) is bare, and I let myself look. I don’t know how to not.

Confusion and something deeper is pooling in my stomach.

He is a beautiful travesty of a man. _A man? Or just a boy?_ With shoulders I would dig my fingers into, shoulders that would hover over me and push me deeper and deeper into that shitty single mattress.

_Nope. Nope. Not the time. Not the…_

As something else wakes up, and my thoughts dip into less-than-chaste territory, I realize that there is another part of my body that no longer belongs to me.

I’m scared to look.

I’m scared to pee.

Because it’s woken up.

I pee sitting down. As my bare arse hits the cheap toilet seat, I hear someone bellow, “HURRY UP SIMON!”

_Simon?_

Who the fuck is Simon? Who is yelling at me? The cool plastic against my arse is casting my dream circumstances into harsh relief. _Am I Simon?_

I haul my pants up (a bit awkwardly, present circumstances considered), staring daggers at the peacocks who all seem to be looking at me ( _judgy peafowl)_ , and hurry back into the strange little room.

Maybe if I close my eyes, I can go back to sleep. I can just squeeze this world out of existence and send it back into the dark recesses behind my eyelids.

_It’s a dream._

_It must be a dream_

A realistic dream to be sure, but a dream nonetheless.

“I’m leaving now Simon! Don’t make me deal with a call from the school again!” I hear a door slam shut. (Whoever that is does not inspire anything warm or fuzzy.)

Curiosity tickles inside of me, the potential for the new and unknown teasing fingertips across my thoughts. I squirm under the possibility.

I suppose the prescient question now is if I want to play along.

I am definitely not ready to explore the body of my dream self—even thinking about it sends a flush blooming from my neck to my navel _. A distraction is what I need_. I let my eyes rove over the bedroom instead.

The walls are a pale, hospital blue, but you’d hardly know it, because they are papered over in dozens of pages. They look like they’ve all been ripped out of different books, of all shapes and sizes. Pencil and charcoal bring this sterile space to life and the perforated and spiral bound edges, frayed in a torn-out-haphazardly kind of way, feels intimate. Like I’m seeing something that was never intended for another’s eyes.

These are _his_ drawings.

They’re of buildings, mostly. Sweeping skylines, sloping bridges, and straggling alleyways transform this interior into its own cityscape. I touch my cheek almost without thinking, and wonder what this boy wants to do with his life.

_I’m an intruder_ , I realize, and I recognize the sharp pang in my gut for what it is—guilt. A bedroom is intimate; it keeps secrets.

_I’m thinking about him as if he’s real and this isn’t just a dream._

Some torture device—probably his phone, I realize—is screaming again. It cries out from the folds of the blankets, this time an earsplitting ping. I fumble around beneath his off white comforter and retrieve the thing—it’s a fucking flip phone—and pick it up with the same care I would afford a grenade with a pulled pin.

I flip the face of the phone open and squint down at the tiny screen.

**Penny (7:46 am): Ms Possibelf is asking me about you. What did you do, Si?**

The challenges of attempting to live another life are coming into full view. Crucial details casually understood by the owner of this lovely body are blank spaces to me. For example, who is Possibelf? Perhaps a teacher of some kind? And Penny might be a school friend, or a girlfriend?

I decide to find out.

Texting with a number pad is a torturous experience, and the irritation I feel as I try to puzzle out what letters are assigned to which numbers is far too realistic for a normal dream.

_Simon (7:47 am): Are you my girlfriend?_

The response is instantaneous. This Penny character must have prodigious thumb dexterity.

**Penny (7:47 am): are you trying to be funny? Or are you trying to dodge the question?**

_Simon (7:48 am): Neither, but thank you for clarifying._

I go to lower the phone, but suddenly think better of it. If I’ve decided to jump into this novelization mid plot, I may as well fully commit to the fallacy.

_Simon (7:49 am): An additional question, Penny. Where do we go to school? If you could provide a full address, that would be optimal._

**Penny (7:49 am): Simon, are you serious?**

_Simon (7:50 am): Yes. I would not have wasted the time it takes to text on this antique cellular device if I weren’t quite serious._

**Penny (7:50 am): Did you buy a thesaurus? Are you trying to show off? Did someone steal this phone? Is this even you Simon?**

_Simon (7:51 am): I take it I’m not usually this verbose._

**Penny (7:51 am): Did you just use the word verbose?**

_Simon (7:51 am): Obviously._

_Simon (7:52 am): Please focus, Penny. I need an address for the school._

**Penny (7:52 am): You’re being really fucking sketch right now, Si.**

In spite of her protestations, an address is quick to follow. I scramble around the room for a pen and paper and find a spare notebook under a flimsy desk. The particle board is chipped and there are circular rings all over its surface—evidence of late nights and cups of caffeine. I fish a pen out of a holographic Pokémon mug (ends chewed. My dreammate has an oral fixation) (I try not to think too hard about that) and jot down the string of letters and numbers. Which, I suddenly realize, end with

London.

_Merlin and fucking Morgana._

I’m in London.

The vicious little phone is vibrating again.

**Penny (7:54 am): Ugh, whatever. We’ll deal with the Possibelf stuff when you get here. But you’d best leave soon. If you don’t hurry up, all the scones will be gone.**

_Simon (7:54 am): Why would that be relevant?_

I must have said something inappropriate, although I’m struggling with what it could be, because this Penny becomes distraught.

**Penny (7:54 am): What the fuck?**

**Penny (7:55 am): What have you done with Simon?**

**Penny (7:55 am): I swear to god if you hurt him, I will come for you. I will spoon out your eyeballs and feed them to the pigeons.**

**Penny (7:55 am): I will gut you from navel to nose, you fucking imposter.**

**Penny (7:56 am): Also, if this is actually Simon, this isn’t funny anymore.**

**Penny (7:56 am): And I’m going to fucking kill you when you get here.**

I snap the phone shut and toss it back onto the bed. It’s unlikely that this friend of Simon’s (I suppose that’s my name until this monstrous dream is over) can hurt me via electronic devices (my imagination produces a dragon of a woman, breathing fire through the flip phone’s tiny screen) but I’m not keen to chance it. That Penny character is a fierce human being, I don’t mind saying.

For now, though, it seems I have more pressing concerns. If I am going to traverse this part of London, I’ll need to get dressed.

Distinguishing between clean and dirty laundry is an exercise in futility. Eventually, I find the courage to start smelling each item in order to determine freshness levels—the hair follicles in my nostrils will never be the same.

I made the unfortunate strategic error of not smelling socks and pulled my foot into something…crusty and rather firm (and decided immediately not to think any more about it).

It isn’t until I’m pulling a (clean?) shirt over my head that I notice the bruises. As I lift my arms, something sharp shoots through my abdomen. Pain. A lot of it.

With fingers that are much stubbier than my own, I trace lines over my ribs. Deep reds and blooming purples pepper my lower back and chest.

“Where did you get these?” I ask the empty air. “Who are you?” I say again, out loud, just to hear his voice. It’s rougher than mine, but softer too—whatever that strange, intangible quality is that makes a voice kind, Simon has it in spades. And I want to hear it, over and over again. I want to wrap myself in the sound of this stranger who creates worlds out of deft lines and wears a garden of bruises in places no one can see.

I consider showering, but the strange lurch in the bottom of my stomach quickly makes me reconsider. _I’ll shower later,_ I think, _if there is a later._ How long could a dream possibly last?

When I finally step out of his flat, my shirt is wrinkled, my shoes have holes in the soles, and my hair looks like I’ve touched a live wire. I waged an epic battle with the rose bush of golden curls and was soundly defeated. I’m going to purchase the appropriate product for this overgrown disaster at the nearest Boots, so help me Merlin.

“Simon-whatever-your-name-is,” I say to the flat’s front door. “I don’t know you. You may be an elaborate figment of my imagination. But Crowley, you’re a fucking disaster.”

But then I turn around, and all thoughts of golden boys and sinful socks are washed away.

_London_.

I know that I spent years romanticizing the idea of London. I know that London has always been an intangible dream, a concept untouchable, more possibility than place.

The apartment building is a moldy, lurching thing, but as I stand half turned, my key still in the lock…this view could capture the heart of the most jilted lover.

The blue skies are wide awake, gentle wisps of white hanging back on the horizon. Sunlight glances off a thousand glass windows. I feel like the world is winking at me and for once, I’m interested in what it has to offer. 

Traffic races by a thousand floors below, screaming and constant and alive. Nothing moves slowly. Not here. Not in London. ( _I'm in London!_ ) I suddenly understand the skylines that sweep across these walls, paper worlds that seek to bring the outside in.

Tears are springing to my eyes and I don’t have anyone to blame. “Simon, your tear ducts are defective,” I choke, trying to pull myself together.

_“You were made for the world, little puff. And it’s not ready for you.”_

_“But what if the world’s too big?”_

_“Well, then you’ll be big too.”_

I push the feelings back behind these simple blue eyes and drag a long, rattling breath into my chest. I’m in London. I’m going to enjoy every fucking second.

…

This is a fucking nightmare.

There is a strange colour wheel spinning on this stupid fucking phone and I cannot get the maps function to load. An effort to key the school address into the pitiful excuse for a web browser lead to the fucking thing freezing full stop and requiring a restart.

The rage I feel for this flippy thing could rival a nuclear reaction. And for a tiny moment, my body _feels_ like a bomb, just itching to go off.

The same cheery light I saw from the balcony is streaming onto the pavement. Down here, however, there are _people_ shouldering past me, jostling me from side to side, as if my very presence is an affront to efficiency. _Excuse me for being a bit wobbly on my directions, you fucking busybodies—_

My skin starts to squirm, almost as if stretching to contain something bigger. _Is this normal? Some strange condition of this dreamscape? Is my anger becoming a living thing?_

No. I am an adult (I turned eighteen this past February) and while the body I am in is an age currently undetermined, I am certain that I can handle this. There are literally hundreds of people rushing past me. I just need to reach into the current and…“Excuse me,” I say, reaching out to touch the shoulder of a man in a soft grey suit, baby faced and almost beautiful.

“Sod off,” he says, lurching away from me.

_Oh. That was…unexpected._

I try again, this time stepping in front of a woman in a purple blazer, somewhere in the nebulous thirty-something space of middle age.

“Hello, I was wond—” I start, but all of my polite words, every good-natured syllable dies on my lips as the woman dodges me with all the grace of a fucking ballerina—pirouetting away from me without breaking stride.

“Why is everyone in this place so fucking rude?” I ask the crowds moving around me. I’m in a dream. Speaking to myself aloud in public can only have so many ramifications. 

I look back down at the fucking flip phone and see that the colour wheel has stopped spinning and the skeleton of a map is shining up at me in blurry pixels.

How the devil does this idiot find his way anywhere with this ridiculous device?

“Fine,” I say to no one in particular. My indignation does not discriminate. “I will traverse this wasteland of human indecency on my own merits.”

A few passersby shuffle to the edges of the pavement to give me a wider berth. Is the normal attitude with which tourists are afforded? Politeness, it seems, is going out of style.

Along with general cleanliness. As I start to follow the fuzzy lines in the map application that I suspect may literally be from the last century, I can’t help but turn up my nose. What Sandside lacks in hustle and bustle, it makes up for in sanitation (I make a mental note to thank The Friends of Sandside, a posse of aging ladies determined to ensure that litter is an endangered species, that public greenery is smooth as glass, and the bike racks freshly painted).

Someone barrels into my shoulder, sending me reeling. “Watch it!” a voice says, somehow managing to be both rushed and condescending. “Fucking teenagers. Always on their phones.” Before I can register who is chastising me or why they’ve nearly knocked me off my feet, they’re long gone.

My vision blurs and, for a moment, I feel like I could crawl out of my skin.

_What is this feeling under my skin?_

Hot tears leak from the corners of my eyes and I squint, trying to keep my feet. There’s a fucking ocean, hot and demanding, cresting inside my chest and I have no idea how to keep it from washing me away.

I bite the inside of my cheek, reminding myself that, “I’m here. I’m still here,” I whisper. “I’m here, on a shit street, and I’m going to figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”

Through the tears and the heat, I see my edges start to soften—like my life is running on fewer frames per second.

“I’m going to find my stupid school. In this fucking place, where **_the streets have no name_ **.”

Something hot and white erupts inside of me. The monster is coming out. The street tilts, first to the left, and then again to the right and then—

My hand starts to screech.

The nausea lurches as the world wobbles. I focus on the vibrations humming against my palm.

_The phone. It’s the phone._

How does this device have yet another sound? Three ringtones and no functioning map.

No call display either, I notice, as the phone continues its cry for attention. I push through the tremble in my fingers and press the speaker to my ear.

“Ba—I mean, hello?”

“Simon, is that you?”

It’s a female voice. Approximately my age. Sure of herself, even as she asks a question. All signs point to Penny. “Yes,” I answer, because what else is there to say?

“Are you okay? I wasn’t serious about spooning out your eyeballs.”

“I…” There’s bile rising in my throat. What the fuck is happening to my body? I haven’t vomited since preschool. “I think I’m lost.” _And about to explode._

The sigh that moves between radio waves is resigned, but filled with something deeper. Affection, I think. “You were serious, huh?”

“As a heart attack.” My vision has shifted from blotchy black spots to bright light. Is this hormones? Or some kind of condition?

“That’s not funny, Si. Heart attacks kill millions a year. They don’t deserve to be the butt of your jokes.”

I swallow a dry heave and try to focus on her voice. Try to tether myself to something real. “Of course. How silly of me. I will allot them the appropriate deference in future.”

“You’re so fucking weird today.”

“Just get me to class, please,” I say.

And she does. 

**Simon, as Baz**

_Please let me keep him…_

I hear soft piano keys tinkling behind my earlobes.

_What a lovely melody._ I want to gather the sound up, wrap it in my arms, and just hold onto it.

My arm casts around for the source, my brain at baseline processing power. Words like _good_ and _that’s nice_ start to splash across the screen as my world begins to boot up.

Other instruments have started to sing, and I feel like a little kid, being rocked back and forth by the movement of a bow across strings. _Jesus, this bed goes on forever._

My grabby hands can’t reach the sounds. They’re somewhere out of reach.

_I guess it’s time. Time to get up._

With a groan that I feel in my toes, I force myself up in bed and open my eyes.

And stare straight into the eyes of a giant monster.

“WHAT THE FUCK!”

A face, twisted into a grotesque tableau of anguish is staring into my soul. Monstrous hands clutch the bedpost hard enough to crack the frame. _This is it._ My magic has finally done it—finally summoned a creature from the ugly parts inside of me, the dark corners where I knew monsters lived, but pretended they didn’t.

Nightmares made flesh, to extort their judgement on my fucking soul.

I scramble backwards, tangling my arms and legs in the world’s biggest fucking blanket (this isn’t my blanket) (seriously, why is there so much volume?), eventually forced to a lurching stop by an enormous headboard.

The pillars of a four poster climb up into the sky, and there are more monsters perched above. Smaller creatures, with eyes no less hungry.

I’ve been transported to a hell dimension. With extremely comfortable linens and mattresses that go on for days. That’s the only explanation.

“Don’t come any closer,” I say, clenching my hands into fists. _How do I never have enough fists?_

Two realizations hit me in almost simultaneous confusion. First, that wasn’t my voice. _What did my magic do to my voice?_

And then.

_My magic._

_It’s…gone._

There is a tiny moment, so small it barely registers, where I feel loss. A glimmer of grief for a thing that had lived inside of me for most of my life. Like saying goodbye to a shitty roommate you’d started to tolerate, not because they were nice necessarily, but because they would make a really mean curry once in a while.

But that regret is barely a pinprick compared to the relief.

_My magic is gone_. No more monsters shaped like teenagers, no more running and nausea, no more oceans of heat cauterizing my senses and sending my body into emergency conditions.

No more fetal positions, desperately trying to contain the explosive potential of an H bomb in my body that is just too small for it. No more worrying about going off and hurting everyone around me. No more guilt.

“Holy fucking shit.”

And then the first realization catches up with me. _That_ , I realize, _is not my voice_.

I look down at the rest of my body on instinct. Long limbs, freckle-less skin, the feeling of cotton pajamas I intuitively know are zillion times more expensive than anything I could ever afford.

I raise my hands, still clenched, and see smooth knuckles, with no scars to speak of. My fists look small, somehow, as if the long fingers were not meant to compress into this shape.

“What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck!” I shout to the open air.

The monster, which I now realize is a stone gargoyle, built into this gargantuan bedframe, is staring at me in a way that feels pretty fucking judgy. “What the fuck are you looking at?” I snap, throwing the duvet at the thing and rolling out of bed. Even from beneath a mound of feathers and fluff, I can still feel its eyes, sizing me up and probably finding me wanting.

I need to find a fucking bathroom.

I’m in the body of the poshest, fanciest bloke I’ve ever seen.

Poshest because his bathroom is filled with a thousand fucking bottles of hair-cream this and collagen that—although one of the things in the shower smelled like some combination of cedar and bergamot, and I liked that quite a lot.

Fanciest because of his fucking sock drawer. Well, his sock drawer and a thousand other things in this ridiculous room (an ironing board tucked behind his door, for example) (who the fuck irons their clothes). But it was his fucking sock drawer that knocked me on my arse. His socks are lined up by colour, each pair folded into a perfect square lump and set into a fucking colour wheel, capturing every shade of grey imaginable.

Something inside of me yearns to disrupt the calm—no one has the right to be this perfect

It could be a dream. _Actually,_ I think as I wiggle into a pair of slacks that hug my thighs in a way that my own clothes never would, _this has gotta be a dream_. The last thing I remember was laying down to sleep.

I push my long fingers up through my longer hair. (It’s so soft.) (I like the way this feels.) (Is that weird?) (That’s probably weird). A realistic dream. A good dream. But we’re definitely in some weird dream space. There’s no other explanation.

Which also means that, in this liminal space between asleep and awake, there’s no accountability. No repercussions. No magic.

I cock my head to the side and really let myself look at the bloke staring back at me.

Dark hair, long enough to touch his shoulders (my shoulders?), cheekbones that could cut glass, and something in his brow—he looks dignified somehow. It’s the kind of face that refuses to be taken advantage of. That can turn away inconveniences with a single disappointed frown.

One eyebrow lifts in the mirror. The reflection looking back at me is almost knowing and smug and…

_Fucking gorgeous._

_Oh._

_Well._

That’s…something. Stirring. Something hot in the bottom of my stomach. Something that wants to strip every inch of fabric and explore his skin—

_No. Nope._

I’m not gonna spend the first day (even if it is a dream) in nearly a decade where I haven’t had to carry the weight of my magic around lusting after a stranger. I need to get out of this room. I need to get dressed.

“Baz, you lazy fucking numpty! Get your arse down here!” _Baz? Is that even a real name?_ The words are a heat-seeking missile. I’m not sure if it’s the sound of someone else populating my dream space, or the tone of voice of whoever that was, but that is a woman not to be trifled with. 

Feet stomp up what must be stairs (I suppose my bedroom is at the top of a staircase somewhere) and settle outside my room.

“I’m serious Baz!” she says, a fist pounding against the bedroom door. I’m very sure that I do not want to come face to face with whoever owns that voice. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Uh,” I start to say, and then curse myself. I don’t have to answer her. This is my dream. “Go away!” I shout back.

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, you little shit,” she says. I can feel her securing my location between red cross hairs. “I will not put up with your bitchiness first thing in the morning.”

“I’m not—” I start to reply, but she’s not interested.

“Just because you’ve got a bunch of fancy acceptance letters,” she says, and I hear something more than the moodiness of someone pre-caffeination. _That’s sadness_ , I realize, _badly hidden_. “Doesn’t mean you get to skive off. Get your arse downstairs, or you’re going to be late.”

“I’m coming!” I shout through the door.

“Whatever,” she says, and I can taste her casual disappointment in the air and, even though I’ve never met this woman, haven’t even seen her face, I feel the guilt weighing on my chest.

_What did you do to piss her off, dream boy?_

For the first time since I realized that the demon was actually a gargoyle, I feel somewhat grounded and begin to wonder if there is some way that this is…real.

But then I smell bacon, crisping in a pan somewhere, close enough that I can picture how I would cram the greasy strips into my mouth and wash them down with a hot cup of tea and, shit, my priorities are rapidly realigning. I’m up, dressed, and out of this creepy serial killer room before my stomach starts to grumble.

Dream boy is fucking loaded. I suppose the four-poster bed decorated with fucking gargoyles should’ve been a tip off, but the rest of the place still makes my eyeballs pop.

I never thought a house could have too many hallways, but then, I have never had a reason to be in a house like this before. I nearly trip when I burst into the entrance hall. The ceilings vault with an airy grace that I’ve never seen indoors before.

“Oy! Basil!”

_Baz must be short for Basil. But why would he be named after a spice?_

Answering the call of this homicidal woman seems like bad planning, but I’m adrift in this dream of wealth and bacon, and so I decide to see where it takes me.

Into a kitchen, it turns out, filled with a glorious spread of—

“Breakfast!” I yelp.

“I wouldn’t count on that.” My eyes catch up with my new surroundings. Stainless steel appliances, dark granite countertops, a breakfast nook perched under an open window across the room. And a girl, who’s maybe eleven or twelve, sitting on a barstool in front of an island, cluttered with pancakes and scrambled eggs, and a giant plate of bacon.

My mouth has never watered in a dream before today. The bacon grease brings tears to my eyes.

“No time, boyo,” someone says, which is when I turn (grudgingly) away from the food. “Maybe you should’ve got up when I called you.”

The voice from earlier belongs to a woman who looks like a video game player from Grand Theft Auto. Dr. Martens, a leather jacket, and an I-will-not-hesitate-to-slash-your-tires expression. _This can’t be my mum. I don’t wanna be scared of my mum._

“What!” I sputter. I know that I should probably be doing reconnaissance. Trying to figure out who is who in this cast of dream characters, but my needs are easy to prioritize where food is involved. “Wait no!” There is no greater slight. There is nothing worse she could do to me. She can’t just show me the spoils of a mountain of food and then just take it away. I am bereft. I am a hollow husk of what I once was. I— “You can’t!”

“Breakfast is for people who haven’t slept in on a weekday!”

The monster in miniature looks up from her plate, a bit of egg white dangling from her lip. “Baz, don’t argue. Fiona’s not worth it.”

“Stay out of it, Mordelia,” the woman snaps, brandishing her fork at the girl in a gesture that is way more threatening than a fork has any right to be.

I ignore her. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. “You’re a monster,” I say. There’s a white streak in her hair, and I hate how cool it makes her look.

“I’m your crazy aunt,” she says, an evil smile twisting the corners of her lips.

“Same difference.” I think I’m pouting.

Fiona gets up just as the toaster pops. “Stop stalling and get your arse to school.” She spreads butter (real butter!) across the slice of toast (smells like pumpernickel) (delicious).

I’m so preoccupied with the way the butter is melting, a gentle yellow hue on a perfectly browned slice of heaven, the question just slips out. “How?”

I don’t need to see her eyes sharpen. “What do you mean how?”

“Uh—”

“Did something happen to your car?” There’s danger in her voice now.

“No?” I say, just in case she decides to tip over into something rabid.

“Then,” she says, leaning across the island in the kitchen, her elbows inches away from a plate of steaming pancakes (I’m so fucking hungry, I could cry), “go get your keys, climb into your car, and get the fuck to school!”

“Yes ma’am,” I say, turning and practically running out of the kitchen.

“You’re going the wrong way!”

This is not, I decide as I practically sprint down the hall, feeling those laser eyes tracking my every move, a dream; this is a fucking nightmare.


	6. Futile Attempts at (in)Decency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arbitrary social norms, moustaches and their bristles of discontent, futile attempts at decency, and water eroding definition.

**Baz, as Simon**

Trains were not designed with new passengers in mind and are the opposite of user-friendly to new participants. I begin mentally drafting a letter to Transport for London, bemoaning the assumptions that are baked in to this type of public transit.

It’s elitist, exclusionary, and frankly, unsanitary.

It’s taken me the better part of the morning to arrive at Simon’s secondary school. This Penelope character made a valiant effort at support, but when I missed my stop the first time, her supply of patience ran dangerously low (“How am I supposed to know when to exit the train?” I’d protested. To which she shouted a stern reply, “because you’ve been doing this every day for three years!” I’d not had a rebuttal and she’d run out of patience and time before our first lesson.)

I’d been on my own after that, with only the connectivity of a flip phone to assist. The journey had taken the better part of the morning and I couldn’t find it within me to care. It’s just a dream, after all.

“Simon!” A ball of energy and flyaways is charging in my direction and I can only assume the source is my texting companion.

“Hello," I start but this Penelope doesn’t break stride for pleasantries. Just grabs me by the collar of my shirt and drags me down to her level. “What are you doing, you madwoman?”

She ignores me, and pulls a pen light from her pocket.

“Where did you get—”

“Shh!” she hisses, flashing a beam into both of my eyes and, presumably, watching my pupils contract. I indulge her, although I’m not sure I could escape this woman’s clutches had I wanted to. Once she’s satisfied, her grip loosens and she releases me.

“What on earth are you playing at?”

She slips her hands onto her hips, not even a little bit scandalized. “You were behaving strangely, Simon. I’m just taking precautions.”

“Against what, exactly?” I sputter. “And where did you get that?”

“Not your business,” Penny replies. “And I had to make sure you weren’t a cyborg.”

“Was my texting repartee that dry?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I swear to god, if you’ve been hiding an English major under all those shitty essays I’ve helped you edit into something passable, I’m going to strangle you with your colon.”

This Penelope is a fierce human being, and I definitely don’t mind saying so.

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” I say, letting her lead me in whatever direction we would normally walk after the conclusion of the lunch hour.

“Nothing. Just stop acting so fucking dodgy and stop missing class. The school’s already talking to Davy, Si. You can’t miss much more and expect them to let you graduate.”

_ Oh _ .

I had not considered the effect my tardiness could have on this man’s everyday life.

_ It’s just a dream _ , I remind myself. There’s nothing real here, except for a possible mental health diagnosis for extremely vivid dreams.

“C’mon. Let’s go listen to Mr. Alcott try and pretend that British colonialism wasn’t inherently harmful or racist, shall we?”

As I trail behind her purple knapsack and fuzzy bun, I can’t help but think that, under different circumstances, we could be friends, this Penny and I.

**Simon, as Baz**

I stand in front of the shiny black Jaguar, hands in my pockets, glaring, trying to convince myself that the headlights aren’t judging me.

_ It’s not a staring contest, Simon. _ I can practically hear Penny in my head. She’s never had much patience for stubbornness, even in her best friend.

He drives a fucking Jag. Of course he does.

The part of my brain that was beginning to think this was more than just a dream starts to retreat back into my subconscious. Because this is far too close to some fucked up wish fulfillment to be real. A life where I get to be handsome and posh, with fancy cars and all the food I could ever want? And no magic? All of the things I wish for but cannot have, served up on a literal silver platter (I saw it in the kitchen. They had silver platters  _ and  _ silver spoons. It’s borderline cliché).

I want that car. I want to slip into its ebony leather seats and lay my hand on the gear shift. I want to roll down the windows, ease smoothly out of the drive, and feel the sunshine on my cheeks and the wind in my curls.

I want it so bad, my throat clenches around the words and tears sting my eyes. But I can’t have it because of one game breaking detail.

I can’t drive.

Sure, I’m eighteen, and yeah, there’s driving lessons, but I’ve never had a placement last longer than Davy, never had group home staff willing to teach me, and I’m short exactly one family. The opportunities for my automotive education are painfully sparse.

Panic (and something like bile) rises in my throat and, for a moment, I think about running back into the house, vaulting up the stairs, and climbing back into that monstrous bed. (Were it not for the dragon lady, ready to roast me upon re-entry, I probably would’ve.)

My eyes dart around the front of the house for another transportation option.  _ School can’t be  _ that _ far. This looks like a small town. _

_ There must be another— _

That’s when I spot the bicycle. The piping and seat are pitch black, with a burst of pink sprouting out of the handlebars.

_ That…could work. _

The seat-to-pedal ratio is going to be horrific, but the prospect of settling behind the wheel of that glorious car and trying to work the various pedals and clutches and gears and— _ yeah fuck that. _

I cross the lawn, trying to pretend that this is normal for me. I’m just a guy, standing in front of a bike, asking if he can ride it.

_ Not asking.  _ I gulp down my inhibitions, right the thing, and settle on. There’s a basket attached to the handlebars that’s shaped like barbed wire.  _ Mordelia might be a bit punk, _ I think, before pushing off down the driveway.

And that is how I (well, technically a dude named Baz) ended up cycling around the main drag on a twelve-year-old’s bicycle, bright pink streamers billowing in the wind.

It takes me almost an hour to find the school, and even then, I only stumble into the shitty car park on accident—this body has so much fucking leg, I don’t really know what to do with it.

The cafeteria doors were closed when I arrived. I hadn’t meant to throw them open—the wind was at my back and added to the effect.

_ It’s a dream. It’s just a dream. _

I decide to let the strange tides pull me along and march into the cafeteria, head back, walking with as much confidence as I can muster.

I’m passing a table on my return from the meal line, when I feel someone touch my elbow.

“Baz! What’re you doing?”

He’s a handsome bloke, with red hair and a stretched look to him, like he grew too many inches in too few months and is still playing catch up. There’s a stocky fellow sitting next to him, grinning into his lunch.

“I’m…going to eat?”

“With us, I hope,” the Square says, shuffling a little closer to stretch. Stretch’s face starts to glow, the beginnings of a blush touching his cheeks.  _ Huh. Wonder if they’re together? _

“Did we offend your dignity? Are we no longer suitable friends?” The square looking one says and I realize I’m still standing and that might be considered a bit rude. I squish in beside him and immediately tuck in.

Penny has told me that my eating habits leave a bit to be desired and nothing to the imagination. “I shouldn’t know the exact status of your food’s progression into paste.” It was a not so subtle hint to chew with my mouth closed. And I try, for Penny. But this is a dream and, the roast beef is tender, with just the right amount of seasoning and there’s really no point slowing its journey from plate to mouth—not if it’s just a dream.

Square and Stretch are both staring at me aghast, eyeballs openly bulging as I shovel gravy and chunks of meat into my face.

I offer them my best grin, my mouth half open and still filled with food stuffs.

“Baz, are you…”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Why are you eating like that?”

“Did something happen to the evil father figure?”

“Did you get a tapeworm?”

“What?” I try to process the questions while cramming some mashed potatoes (boxed, but made with butter, which makes up for it) into my face. I see the Stretched one cringe. “Do I not usually smile? And I’m eating like I always do. And the father figure is…” I search for a neutral word. “Fine. The evil dragon woman however—”

“Not one bad word about our patron saint Fiona,” Square says. “God, your aunt is so hot.”

“Don’t be gross Dev,” Stretch says, glowering into his yogurt cup.  _ Yeah, there’s definitely something going on there. _

“What! It’s not weird when the hotness levels are that obvious.”

“You’re related!”

“Not by blood! Quit giving in to arbitrary social norms, Niall.”

This appears to be a conversation well worn.

“Baz,” the one called Niall says, looking for any off ramp from this conversation. “What the fuck is wrong with your hair?”

“My what?”

“You look like you tumbled through a barnyard, mate,” Dev (the other one) says, successfully distracted.

I reach up and prod at the black waves. What kind of bloke wears it this long, anyway?

_ Wow, that’s soft _ , I think and then reach up and let more slip through my fingers. “Oh, that feels nice,” I say, before realizing it’s out loud.

Dev’s eyes have shifted from humour to open suspicion. “Did you fall out of bed this morning? Maybe hit your head?”

“What?” I say, still properly distracted by the way this hair feels.  _ So soft. So lovely. _

The two share a look that betrays years of intimacy. “I’ve never seen you without your mum’s cord.”

“What cord?”

That look again. “Okay, are you sure you’re awake?”

“Not suffering from a terminal illness.”

“Not under some weird magical spell?”

“Mordelia didn’t finally manage to poison you, did she?”

These two are relentless, finishing each other’s sentences, and at my expense. I need to change the terms of this conversation. 

“Hey, are you guys an item?” I ask, as I start to pack up my tray, which is completely clear.  _ Okay, maybe I did inhale more than I chewed. I have no regrets. _

“Are we what!” Dev says, while Niall chokes into his juice box. “No!”

“No,” Niall echoes, but in tones that are not nearly as flustered as the (oblivious) boy next to him.

“Well, maybe you should be,” I say, and walk away.

I can’t believe that this dream is going to make me do a full day of school. Dev rescued me when I tried to follow a Year 9 into the first classroom with students in it.

“Baz!” he’d hissed, grabbing me by the elbow and steering me away from what I’d hoped to be the Art room. “We’ve got English Comp with Mr. Minos right now. Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you today?”

He’s stewing in the desk next to me, stealing glances at the red one every time he thinks he’s not looking.

“Can anyone tell me the origins of the word twilight? And no,” the teacher says, cutting off the half dozen hands that shoot into the air. “I’m not looking for a synopsis of a famous vampire trilogy.”

“It’s actually a four books series,” a girl in the seat next to me mutters, and not too quietly.

“Thank you, Phillipa, for your first and probably most substantive contribution of the year.”

A few scattered chuckles. “Anyone?”

After a stretch of silence that would rival Possibelf’s, he finally says, “Two light. That’s the origin of the word twilight. It’s dusk and dawn, when it’s neither day nor night. When the border between worlds blur and you might encounter something not human.”

“I’ve heard some people call it golden hour,” a female voice says from across the room.

“What about magic hour? It’s something my grandma says,” another voice asks, from behind me this time.

“In this town,” Mr. Minos answers, “I don’t find that surprising.”

Everyone laughs, and most of the room casts a furtive glance or two in my direction.

_ This Baz seems to have quite a reputation. _

**Baz, as Simon**

“You’re late.”

The sun dipped behind the horizon an hour ago. The only light in the flat spills out of the television screen, casting long shadows in the valleys of Davy’s face.

_ In other news, in downtown London, there appears to have been a widespread act of vandalism. _

**_“It must’ve been a coordinated effort,” Police Chief Williams told reporters. “Every single street sign for a square kilometer just…disappeared.”_ **

**_Police are looking into what chemical compounds could remove the lettering on London’s public street signs, while officers are requesting video footage from local businesses in the affected areas.”_ **

“Am I?” I ask, unsure of how to proceed. Who is this man and what is his relationship to Simon?

He pushes his body from the couch—he’s taller than I’d expected. Perched in front of the telly, he’d seemed so much…smaller, somehow.

His body closes around the doorframe.

“Where were you?” The words aren’t threatening—not overtly. There’s something tight behind his eyes, though.

“I was walking home with a friend.” I was actually exploring the London underground, but I will not let this man make me stutter.

His moustache bristles with the discontent he’s not putting into words.

“Your social worker called,” he says, leaning into me. Placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing. Hard.

“Oh.”  _ I have a social worker? _

“Said you’re missing class. Said I needed to check in.” His hand tightens. “Make sure everything was alright.” Little puffs of stale breath splash against my cheek. I can smell salt and vinegar crisps and the muck of a day or two without brushing your teeth. “Is everything alright?”

He’s so close, all semblance of personal space is forgotten. “Peachy,” I say, my mouth a firm line.

A flash of something violent ripples across his brow (furrowed) and through his eyes (bulging, for just a moment). But it passes.

“Don’t,” he says, with the voice of a man used to getting what he wants by, “let it happen again.”

As much as the prospect of naked Simon makes my cheeks flame, I need to shower off this day. I push through the door into the ensuite that barely deserves the name and attempt to flick the switch for the overhead fan, which is, predictably, broken.  _ What a mess of a life this boy lives. This dream boy _ , I correct.  _ This fantasy. _

Because that’s what he is, I think, turning the grimy nob from off to hot. Brown-ish water sputters out of the faucet and I start to gently remove my clothes while I wait for heat.

I know this is a dream, but going to the bathroom still feels like a violation. My eyes dance over muscled thighs, across his bare chest, like a lover desperately trying not to tread on their beloved’s toes.

_ He’s not my beloved. _

And yet.

I still try to preserve some of his dignity, although how long that will last once I have to wash is yet to be determined, and climb into the tub.

For a dream, the feeling of too-hot water boiling your skin just enough that it stings but not quite enough to burn is replicated in painful, blissful accuracy. I lean into the stream and let out a sigh that encapsulates my entire fucking day. 

I’m grateful, I think, that this is over. The company was intellectual enough (if pressed, I may even admit that I  _ like _ Penelope), the classes were a bit mundane (a lifetime of private tutors does render the public school system a touch redundant), and the city was somehow both more and less than what I’d expected London to be. I suppose this is what happens with pedestals and dreams—both literal and aspirational. You yearn after a thing for so long that it becomes more about you and less about what the physical place or goal or thing actually is. I was not prepared, but perhaps that was the only way to experience a dream not so much crashing as solidifying into something…real.

The caulking is crawling out of its skin and the tub is stained with London’s poor efforts at water purification. This dilapidated flat seems to sag in the effort of continuing to exist. How Simon has carved out a life in this place is both admirable and a little sad.

I’ll wash soon (a thought that pulls a blush and a shudder from somewhere inside me). There’s a single bottle perched upside-down (branded with the phrase  **_three-in-one!!!_ ** with a slew of overzealous exclamation marks) on the bathtub’s edge and a lonely bar of soap slowly melting into mush on one of the shower’s raised plastic divots.

I shudder. No body wash. No facial scrub.

Three-in-ones should be banished to the wastelands of toxic masculinity; skin is skin, and it requires care and attention. Age spares no one, no matter how tough they may believe themselves to be.

_ Oh fuck. _ There’s no loofah.

I glare at the puddle that was once a bar of soap.  _ Does he expect me to lather with my bare hands?  _ I’m not an animal. I refuse to— _ oh g _ _od_. The implications of a full body hand wash set my already volatile emotions up in flames. My cheeks respond in kind.

He can clean his own damn body.

This isn’t real anyway. He’s a character in a dream—a vivid dream, a dream with more attention to detail than most films, a dream that has stretched for hours and still no reprieve. None of this is real. It doesn’t mean anything—

_ I’m starting to wonder. _

No. Wondering and washing can come later. For now, I let myself sink to a sitting position, scooting until I am directly under the water pressure—which pounds into my skin like a cheap massage chair. I let my arms wrap around my legs, let my head rest against my knees, and I let myself disappear in a swirl of thoughts, and hopes, and water, and the promise of a future I’m not sure I want.

I make a mental note to add a loofa to my hypothetical shopping list—products required for the basic maintenance of Simon.

**Simon, as Baz**

The shower is my safe place.

Not sure why that’s a thing or when it started; I’ve been hiding out in bathrooms for as long as I can remember. Bile and tears are best hidden behind a stall or in the forgiving ceramic of a sink.

At Davy’s, I’ve got my own shower for the first time in my whole fucking life. Davy doesn’t pay utilities (“Rent’s inclusive,” he said early on. “So, you can crank the heat and those fucking slumlords can’t charge you a penny.”) Even still, he roars at me over the noise of the pipes whenever my showers stretch more than five minutes. About the environmental havoc I’m wrecking, and about the steam that creeps out into the rest of the flat, and the inconvenience of having another person so obviously in his space.

Davy doesn’t hurt me—not with fists, not like everyone else. I try to give him space, to let the flat air out, to give my magic a chance to settle and give him a chance to settle without it doing…whatever my magic does to people. But when Davy lashes out, it’s with words.

_ “You’re a paycheque.” _

_ “I can’t fix you.” _

_ “I thought I could salvage things.” _

_ “But you weren’t right.” _

_ “You’ll never be enough.” _

I’ve got the timing down to a science: if I stay out past eight o’clock (with my job, that’s most nights), he’s usually asleep on the sofa when I get home. Sagging into the cushions of the couch, man and furniture beginning to meld. The soap opera of Sky News blares its opinions through his blown-out speakers. Davy lives for the drama, raging against the machine from the comfort of his dingy flat, the soft blue light of pundits and opinions pooling in his irises. 

These are the hours when I can shower, when I can disappear into the steam and let may day wash down the drain.

As I step into Baz’s massive bathroom, I am struck by all of the differences. The tiles are clean and white, the shower head is massive, dumping water on me like a fucking raincloud.

I sigh and settle down onto the bottom of the tub.

**Baz, as Simon**

Exhaustion is a living thing.

I have no phone on which to scroll, and my hands are itching for something to thumb at. I settle for an intrusive exploration of the photos saved on this cellphone of decades past.

Can a life be explained in pictures? If he opened up my photos, would he see a collection of different things that could explain…me? I click right through shots of sagging streets, of green spaces, a playground trapped between towering buildings. The quality is predictably bad, but I can’t look away. Windows and archways and a bridge. Houses, old ones and new, low income apartment blocks, a thousand windows stacked atop one another, a life inside each one.

And then one of a girl with white blonde hair and the fondness for horses.

_ Oh? _

Agatha is lovely, if you’re into that kind of thing. Like a sunbeam whipped into something soft and airy. Her back’s to him and she’s looking out a window.

_ A crush, maybe? _

I’m smiling, a bit soft, as I flip the phone closed and plug it into the chord on the nightside table.

The cretin whose life I’ve inhabited for the day does not own fucking pyjamas. The best I’m able to do is a pair of trackies, so well worn that any stretch has gone soft, and a t-shirt that’s three sizes too big. (Not exactly fashionable).

(But a part of me likes the way this feels. Wrapping myself up in the smell of Simon.)

And perhaps it is this—this feeling of another boy wrapping his life around me, or the stress of the day, or the strange explosive migraine, or the barrage of confusing details—but, for the first time in years and years, I fall asleep as my head hits the pillow.

The dream washes in with the sea.

It’s as if I think the background into life.

The sound of waves crush quietly behind me, the smell of salt and sand and the ocean (the soundtrack for Sandside, the hallmarks of my tiny town’s existence that used to seem dreary but now, as they come back to me in this corner of a dream, maybe add up to a little more).

I could breathe in the breeze and disappear into the sound of home, except…

Except that’s when I see him.

A figure made of gold and grit, a lovely chin jutting out into the horizon. Curls moving around his face.

_ Simon. _

He’s barefoot. There's something so intimate about that detail, in his bare feet. He’s got toes like tree branches. All knots and weird angles.

Instinct pulls my eyes away from him and down to my hands and my arms and my body—all mine.

Is this some extension of my life’s longest dream?

“Baz?”

My name on his lips feels almost metatextual. I don’t know what to say to that, how to answer that greeting in this liminal space that, I’m suddenly sure, does not exist.

I want to be closer to him—close enough to check and see if there’s a freckle under his left eye. Somehow sure that this will validate the insanity I just endured.

He’s moving towards me, and I’m moving towards him. We meet in the middle.

Something deeper than the thoughts flitting all around me pulls at my hand and, for just a second, I reach it up, extend it out towards him, as if testing to see if he is just a reflection in some cosmic fucking mirror.

For an impossible second, he does the same.

I think our hands are going to touch.

His stubby fingers and my long ones.

“You’re the bloke in my dream,” he says, and gravity returns to the world, dragging our hands back to our sides.

“Wait,” I say, slowly, in as measured a tone as I can manage given the circumstances. “Are you saying that you know me somehow?”

“Know you!” he sputters. The man’s words are made of dynamite, all fits and starts. Exploding into life and then fizzling to nothing. “I just lived a day in your fucking life!”

“That is not possible.”  _ Fuck, it is definitely possible.  _ I’m just not ready to accept that. “This is real?” No. “This cannot be real.”

“Does that mean you spent…that you were…me?”

Admitting it feels like a concession. “You have a filthy bathroom.”

His eyes narrow  _ (My god, those eyes _ . I should’ve spent more time staring into that simple blue. And now, I may never again get the chance).

I’m suddenly struck by the realization that stepping into someone else’s skin is not a simple thing. The vehicle is the same, but how I move inside of it, inside of him, is unique to me.

Because there is no way that his eyes looked like that when was inside of him. Simon has shifted from congenial greeting to open suspicion with the speed of someone who has been hurt often enough that he will always strive to see it coming and to meet it in kind.

Fighting stance. Chin jutted, eyes wary, fists clenched.

“It’s not filthy! It’s mine! I…you…” I want to wrap my arms around his bluster. But he’s so far away from me. “Why the fuck were you in my bathroom!”

“I was searching for an entrance to Narnia.” His glare could rival Fiona’s, but I can’t help but nettle him. “I was studying the mould cultures on your windowsill.”

“Really?”

“Obviously not. I was using the toilet.” My irritation will not be contained. “What else would I be doing?”

Simon flushes a delicious shade of red and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by images of crusty socks.  _ Oh my god, he didn’t, he wouldn’t… _

“Wait wait wait,” Simon says, waving his hands around his head like he’s swatting away fruit flies. “So, this was real?”

I’m trying to keep a cool head, trying to pretend that this is fine, a conversation tacked on. An epilogue, of sorts, providing closure to my life’s longest dream. But, somewhere deep in my gut, I know this is wishful thinking.

“So it would appear.” They’re the only words able to twist up through the madness.

“Wait!” he says again, yelling this time. “You did a day as me?”

“Not by choice,” I mumble. The implications of this revelation are squeezing my voice box: someone real spends every day in that life. The bruises, the nausea, the social workers and what must be the world’s shittiest foster home. The grime and the mould and—

“Why do you have a fucking flip phone?” I say, latching on to the only detail that doesn’t squeeze pity from my pores.

“That’s what you wanna ask me about?” he says, still on guard, but also staring at me in a way that feels intrusive.

This is not the opportune time for me to realize he’s also likely seen me naked, but apparently, this is not a day where I get to choose my own adventure.

“Fuck, you met Davy?” His fingers wring his curls within an inch of their life.

“And Penny,” I add. “I liked her better.” I weigh my words before letting them out into the world, and decide that being civil is alright. “She talked me down when your skull was exploding into the world’s worst migraine. Might I recommend you drink more water—”

“FUCK!”

This was not the reaction I expected.

“Fuck?”

“My magic!”

That word. That fucking word.

_ “You’re made of magic, little puff. All Pitches are. There used to be wizarding families. A whole world of mages.” _

“What did you just say?” My words are an attack and a prayer.  _ Can one sentence be both? _

“Didn’t you feel it?” He’s closed the distance between our outstretched hands. 

“Feel what?” I say, but there’s something stirring inside of me. Something big. Something l’m afraid to admit.

Like the Watford ruins are a sleeping giant that’s rolling over and rubbing its eyes.

_ Magic doesn’t exist. _

_ It’s a fairy tale. _

_ It’s a long line of self-important Pitches, unwilling to cede territory and social standing. _

My hands are wrapping themselves in the loose grey fabric of a shirt three sizes too big.  _ I’m still in his nightshirt.  _

“Don’t fuck around with me, Baz. Not about that.”

“I—” The fight in his eyes has my pulse racing. The proximity of his body, of two bodies, so close together. I feel dizzy.

“Did you feel it?”

“Yes.” There isn’t anything else to say. Not when he’s looking at me like that.

“Could you…” he stumbles for a moment and I almost understand. Describing whatever thing roiled inside of his chest is no easy task. “Did you go off?”

“Go off?”

His fingers tighten, but the anger’s gone. It’s almost like he’s leaning on me. I can feel him shaking.

“It feels like you’re exploding. The uh…the world goes white. I start to shake. And then...I…I go nuclear.”

“That’s happened to you?” I rasp. I’m staring at his lips.

“Yeah. Not a lot. I try…” He lets out a long breath. “I try to control it. To keep it…under?”

The upward inflection of the question feels like solid ground. “It felt like…” I try, “Like leashing a fucking forest fire.”

“Yeah.” His hands go limp and he takes an awkward step back. I can breathe again, if only just. “You gotta be careful with that, eh? If you go off, you could hurt someone.”

Information is coming at me too fast.  _ Going off. Hurting someone. Magic. Alive and real and in this world in a way that I can see and feel and touch. In the body of this ridiculous boy. _

Silence melts into the waves, a gentle inhale and exhale of water on sand.

“I appreciate the warning, but I doubt it will be relevant again,” I finally manage to say.

“S’pose you’re right,” he says. There’s water pooling around his ankles. I don’t know when we got so close to the ocean, but I can feel its cool liquid kisses.

“I can’t believe you’re real.” He’s kicking wet sand to and fro and I think I see a smile. “Thought it was some fucked up dream come true or something.”

_ Dream come true?  _ I try not to think too much about that.

“Basilton Pitch, at your service,” I say, and I’m not sure he picks up the sarcasm in my formality. Semantics.

“Simon, but I guess you already knew that?”

I nod, unsure how lightly to tread. 

“Simon Snow.” He sticks out his hand, and the formality of the introduction feels strange, considering that I lived a day inside his body.

“Snow?” I realize I haven’t heard someone say his full name. Realize it in the overwhelming ridiculousness of that surname. “That is not a real name.”

“Is too.”

I could laugh, but I’m worried he’ll think that it’s at his expense. Which it is. A little. But not in the usual way (my usual being vindictive).

Why is  _ not _ laughing at someone my futile attempt at decency?

“Just cause I don’t have some ridiculously posh name like  _ Basilton _ Pitch—” he starts to say, but something’s wrong. I can feel him fading. A phone line entering an area with spotty service.

“Snow!” I snap. “You’re disappearing.”

Water on the shore.

“I am?” He looks up at me. “So are you!” I hear the realization I can’t see on his face in the tone of his voice. “Shit, wait! There’s so much more I wanted to ask you!”

I let myself laugh this time. It’s the last time. And what a picture of melancholy those feelings paint. Right now, as the last relic of magic in this world starts to fade before my very eyes, I refuse to look too closely at the shapes on that canvas.

“I suppose you’ll have to accept the pieces you got to see,” I say and then add, because I’m weak and I like the way his name sounds in my mouth, “Simon Snow.”

…

When I wake up, in my own four poster, one appropriately stuffed duvet holding me close, I am left with something heavy weighing on my chest and the certainty that I’m missing something.

As if there are molecules striving to manifest some kind of potential, but never manage to exist in enough dimensions.

There are tears on my cheeks.

_ Simon Snow. _

The dream I must’ve had...I’m struggling to recall.

_ Simon Snow. _

Each wave that rolls up into the cool lines takes another piece of the dream back with it, away and into the sea.

_ Simon Snow. _

Water slowly eroding definition.


	7. From Plastic to Silver Spoons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beast with two backs, a leggy tarantula, stumbling equestrian, and scattered memories—confetti on the wind.

**Simon, as himself**

I wake up with the taste of the ocean on my lips and the memory of water swirling in my inner ear.

_ There was a name. And a boy.  _ I should remember. I  _ need _ to remember. The desire to dig my fingers into the waves and pull them back is urgent—to force them to return to me with my bare hands.

I hold my hand, palm up, and stare at it. Memories of another hand, of long fingers and smooth skin.

_ What the fuck is going on? _

I feel like I’m losing time, like all of the “what ifs” of my life somehow merged together, but I can’t quite see them as larger than the sum of their parts.

For a moment, a beautiful free sort of moment, my brain is so scrambled that I don’t feel it, and I get a simple beautiful moment where my magic is not an elephant in every room.

The reprieve is short.

The giant rolls over, crushing me beneath the oppressive insistence that it is here and that I will never forget it.

I want to cry and I don’t know why.

“Simon!” Davy’s rumbling growl moves through the flat.

_ I’m back,  _ I think, before I can wonder exactly where it is I came back from.

The monsters have worn themselves out, have scratched whatever itchy thing my magic inflames under their skin and so the journey to school doesn’t have any fists in it.

The empty school cafeteria feels like coming home—it always does. Davy’s not a “let’s have breakfast together” kind of foster parent. (Honestly, he’s not a “have a meal together ever” kind of guy, but I don’t complain. It could be worse. It has been worse.)

“Simon!” I hear her before I see her.

Wild curls to match everything else that’s wild about her, Penny’s nose is deep in a textbook. (Probably physics, if I had to guess.) Penny’s my life vest as I strive to stay afloat in the kiddy pool of academia, but she’s lousy at physics ( _ “my brain doesn’t work that way, Si!”)  _ and it’s the only scholastic space where I’m even a tiny bit useful. 

“Hey Pen.” I slip into the table next to her.

Schools look a lot like jails. I’ve told Penny this and she responded with something about how state power was entrenched in social institutions and the effects of panoptic surveillance.

_ “It’s coercion, Simon, plain and simple.” _

It hadn’t felt plain or simple. (I hadn’t told her that.)

Still, the cafeteria looks a lot like the mess halls in every prison movie I’ve ever seen. Metal seats, identical trays, a queue for food. Miserable inmates, listing in and out, all of the life gone out of their eyes…

“So…” Penny looks up from her textbook. Those sharp brown eyes are scanning me like a supercomputer. Like I’m a bomb about to go off or something extraordinarily fragile.

“What?” I say, dumping my backpack on the bench.

“You feel…better? Today?”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“You’re talking more like yourself,” she says, pulling out one of her notebooks and scratching down a note.

“What do you mean?” I ask, but the focus behind that big brain is trained on scratching down details.

“And you remembered how to get to school today.” She looks up at me.

_ Fuck, she’s being serious. _

“Of course I know how to get to school. Pen,” I say, exasperation crawling behind my eyeballs. “What is this all about?”

Her horn-rimmed glasses slip down the bridge of her nose, making her brown-eyed stare all the more serious. “I have two theories to explain your behaviour from yesterday.”

“What behaviour!” I get into it with fists, and bruises, and teacher expectations regularly enough. I don’t want to fight with Penny as well.

Her pen starts up again, whizzing details onto the page. “No memory of the event.”

“WHAT EVENT!”

I feel my magic start to smoke.

Penny closes her book and looks up at me, suddenly very serious.

“I have two theories, Simon, for what happened yesterday.”

“Do you ever plan on telling me?”

She ignores my bluster, which is about two seconds from going nuclear. “You were either possessed by a demon or…” she pauses, biting her lip, “you were abducted by aliens. After which point, they implanted a tiny chip in your brain, that they can turn on or off at their creepy intergalactic leisure.”

“I wasn’t abducted by aliens, Pen.”

Her features twist a bit—it’s her scheming face. “Wait a sec. I’ve got it. It’s memories from a previous life. Or maybe your subconscious linked to the Everett interpretation of the multiverse.”

“Penny,” I say, trying to keep my words measured. I don’t want to go off in the dining-hall-prison-cafeteria. “Please tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Penny opens her mouth, looks at my face (she could probably cook an egg on my forehead right now. I can feel steam coming out of my ears), and huffs a giant sigh.

She removes her phone from her back pocket, opens up a text conversation, and passes it to me. “Here. Now you tell me, does this sound like you?”

**Penny (6:15 pm): Hey, what are you writing your Shakespeare essay on for Possibelf**

_ Simon (6:19 pm): Which play are we studying? _

**Penny (6:21 pm): You seriously haven’t started reading it yet?**

_ Simon (6:22 pm): No, I’ve just forgotten. Please remind me. _

**Penny (6:22 pm): Othello dude. C’mon I’ve reminded you about this a hundred times.**

_ Simon (6:23 pm): Well, if I were writing an argumentative essay on Othello, I would focus on the obvious homoerotic subtext. _

**Penny (6:23 pm): Oh? Explain.**

_ Simon (6:24 pm): While Iago’s obsession with our titular main character could very easily be read as (what I’m sure the kids these days are calling) “enemies to lovers,” consider, for a moment, the lengths to which Iago went to prevent Othello and Desdemona from consummating their marriage. _

**Penny (6:24 pm): So?**

_ Simon (6:25 pm): So! It follows that, if Othello was going to be engaging in, as the bard so poetically put it, “the beast with two backs,” Iago wanted it to be with him and no one else. _

**Penny (6:25 pm): That’s a stretch.**

_ Simon (6:25 pm): Of course it is. The text’s Elizabethan. _

**Penny (6:26 pm): you’re a fucking genius, you know that?**

_ Simon (6:26 pm): I do. Thank you for acknowledging it. _

I read the exchange twice, three times over. I swipe over each text to check the date. I check the number attached to my name in Penny’s phone.

Eyes grey as the pavement after it rains, sharp lines walls all around him made of plexiglass. Tall and dark and…

“I uh—” I need to sort this out. I’ve never told anyone about my magic before. Not even Penny. Early lessons, learned in group homes and emergency placements, about having something that no one else does and the lengths people will go to take. Take and take and take. It’s safer this way. Which is why I say, “I sent those.”

The snort that emerges from Penelope Bunce is a bit rude. 

“What?” My tone is defensive and I don’t give a fuck. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Simon,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me, very much a cat who has caught the canary. “If you can tell me what consummation means, I promise to never doubt you again.”

_ Fuck. _

Cheekbones casting elegant sharp, a full mouth, that’s smoothed into something thoughtful.

_ What the fuck is going on? _

**Baz, as himself**

Local radio is a dreary thing.

**_“HumDrum11 will be lighting up the night sky later this month. It’s not often that we get such a show and it is only going to get better.”_ **

I let the words drift between my ears and try to pretend my grey matter doesn’t feel like confetti. Like I’ve popped my top and my memories are scattering to the wind in some sick celebratory farewell. The inside of my skull is both very empty and very full.

_ (Because there are two lives living up there?) (No, not possible.) _

**_“I hope you’re prepared for a light show, folks. Because this one will be quite dazzling; a once in a millennial event. Mark off the last week of May in your calendars.”_ **

Comets and confetti follow me into the lot and through the front entrance of Sandside Secondary School. I try to shake off the feeling that there are more eyes following me than normal.

_ Brianna is not staring. Neither is Megan. Or Daniel. _

The efforts I make to maintain a low profile in this sagging excuse for an educational institute usually means that few people notice me—and if they do, they are not obvious about it.

Except for right now. Now, they are being  _ very _ obvious. I’m...well, I’m turning heads, which is both confusing and suboptimal. 

Focusing on this influx of attention, however, is proving quite difficult.  _ Crowley _ . My mind just won’t stop. Whether my eyes are open or closed, my thoughts are disasterous. An image of a man with blue eyes and golden curls keeps cutting in. The confetti of memories refuses to stop dancing—celebrating my cognitive decline. Can one contract dementia at the ripe old age of 18?

More eyes turn as I walk towards my locker. It’s not like I stow any of my belongings in there—I’m not a cliché. But it’s a meeting place where I can find the few acquaintances I do have and begin my day.

“Basil!”

Thing one has entered stage left. “Niall,” I say, nodding just enough. Too tall for his own good and sporting a splash of red hair, Niall leans against his locker, a textbook under his arm, and something like concern playing on his features. “You feeling alright?”

I raise a single eyebrow in his direction—it’s a subconscious behaviour at this point. A physiological reaction to ridiculous and reflection of my limited patience.

“You remember your car today?” That bloody concern is still there and I do not like it.

_ I _ feel sorry for  _ Niall _ , whether it’s the awkwardness baked into an untimely growth spurt or his unrequited love for my idiot cousin.

“What do you mean, did I remember my car? Of course I did.” I roll my eyes, signalling an end to this conversation. “How else would I get to school?”

“On the wings of a child’s bicycle.” I hear Dev behind me, maximum smugness. Dev is all Grimm and, sometimes, I can’t stand to look at him. There’s too much of my father in the square features and a nose that somehow manages to be both long and stubborn. It is such a fucking strange thing, to realize that Niall looks at this same face, and sees something he can fall in love with.

“Excuse me?” My thoughts are still a kaleidoscope of twisting memories and it’s starting to power a raging headache.

“Don’t try to play this off, Bazzy boy,” Dev says, reaching up to wrap an arm around my shoulder. The cretin is practically buzzing with excitement. “We’re going to celebrate the first spontaneous thing you’ve ever done.”

Niall’s smiling at me, all warm and surprised, waiting for me to say....what, exactly?

_ What the devil is going on? _

Dev elbows me in the side, still cheeky and pleased with himself. “You’re so fucking predictable, Basil,” he says, pulling me into a slow trot towards first period. “Told you he’d try to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“The one day Baz relaxes,” Niall says, resigned.

“The single day that Baz Pitch had any chill.” Dev’s grin is a wicked thing.

I feel the little flecks of my conscious thoughts go up in a thousand tiny puffs of smoke. “If one of you doesn’t clarify whatever thing you want me to acknowledge, and quickly, I’m going to set you both on fire.”

Dev and Niall were both there when I made fire dance between my fingertips. It’s a threat they actually take seriously.

“Good thing I snapped a photo. For posterity’s sake,” Dev says, and then there is a screen being shoved in my face.

With an image of…

“That’s me,” I breathe, all of the angry fire going out on the exhale.

“Fucking right it is, mate.” Dev looks like Christmas has come early.

And in a way, it has.

Because I’m looking at a photo, unquestionably me, atop a tiny bicycle. Long legs pumping the pedals. (My legs are far too long for that fucking bike, I look like—

“You look like a leggy tarantula trying to pedal that thing,” Dev says. Niall has the nerve to fucking snort.

My photo face is twisted with effort. I think I’ve just hit a bump in the washboard of the car park, because my arse is half lifted from the seat.

_ A chin jutting out into the horizon, ready to take on the world with nothing but his fists.  _

“Aleister Crowley,” I whisper. “Please tell me you’re the only two idiots who saw this display?”

Niall is still vibrating with giggles. “Nope. You rolled in just as everyone was breaking between classes.” Niall nudges me with his shoulder in a way I think he means to be affectionate.

I’m unsteady on my feet, and nearly topple over.

“You had quite an audience.”

_ Fuck fuck fuck. _

“And when you realized people were watching,” Dev says, as if building to the climax of this horror story. “You lifted your hand into the air and waved like the fucking queen.”

_ A figure made of gold and grit. _

“Baz Pitch fucking whooped.”

I can’t stop staring. I know it’s me. It has my face. It’s Mordelia’s bike for Chomsky’s sake.

“Fucking posterity.”

_ Curls moving around his face. _

I’m going to kill him.

My memories scatter, confetti on the wind.

**Simon, dream**

Something dark cuts a sharp line across the horizon, hair waving like a flag around his face. Striding like fucking Mr. Darcy in that Pride and Prejudice film (that I watched instead of reading the book).

The memories are all muddy and murky. As he storms towards me, though, the mess starts to clear, like light touching the bottom of a cloudy lake.

It’s the bloke I saw when I was sleeping, the one whose body I lived inside for a whole goddamn day.

“You!” I bark, remembering Penny. Remembering how this tit has single-handedly destroyed my careful magic-real life balance. How he is fucking dangerous. “What the fuck are you doing to my life!”

“Me?” Baz says. ( _ That’s his name, I’m suddenly sure. Baz. Baz Pitch. _ ) ( _ How did I ever forget it?) _ He looks proper mad. Livid, even. The kind of mad that would send my magic lurching. “ _ You _ are single-handedly destroying my reputation.”

“As what? An uptight prick?”  _ Okay, not my finest hour. _

“You wheeled into my school on a fucking child’s bicycle!”

I look down, a bit embarrassed. I probably wouldn’t have done if I’d known this whole thing was real. But I’m not about to tell him that. It’s not every day you wake up in the body of another fucking person.

I attempt casual—not my most natural state of mind. “At least I arrived in style.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you, Snow.”

“It’s Simon.”

“First names are for people who haven’t single-handedly ruined my life.”

“Chill the fuck out, drama queen. It’s just a bike.”

“You waved.” Each syllable rings like a gunshot. Deadly. “Like the queen.”

“I thought that was pretty clever.” It’s true. I had.

“You would.” I don’t anymore.

“But it’s not just that.” He’s still talking, fucking prat. Probably likes the sound of his own voice.

“Oh? I’m sorry. What other delicate sensibilities have I managed to offend.” I’m proud of that one. Making an effort to expand my vocabulary to throw Penny off the chase.

“I wonder? Whatever could it be?” Baz’s face is more alive than I’ve ever seen it. Open. Unguarded. Fucking ruthless. “Maybe that you flirted with literally everything that fucking moves?”

More blushing. At this point, I may as well be a garden of roses. But I’m not backing down. Not with him. “I was just being friendly. You should try it sometime.”

“Friendly!” His voice has gone up an octave.  _ I’m getting to him. I love that I can get to him. _ “I had Phillipa and Belinda approach me today. Gareth asked me…to go for a walk with him this weekend. He thrust his…you know what, that part's not relevant.” Baz takes a breath. “And Shep…he slipped a love letter—”

“A love letter!” That’s a bit unexpected. I don’t get any love letters in my own body.  _ Would I? If I didn’t have this fucked up magic inside me? _

Why do so many of these questions hurt?

“Into my locker.”

I snort. I hadn’t realized I’d been so effective.

“This isn’t the 90s, Snow, and my life isn’t a romcom. Or a joke.”

I should feel something. Regret. Guilt. But seeing this version of Baz is affecting me. The version that is, for just a moment, out of control.

“I’m just spicing things up,” I say, pushing. Pushing for more. Pushing against the tides of the ocean in this fucking dream space that is pulling us together. “I’m not really trying to. I’m just being…nice.” Which is, apparently, a thing that Baz has never tried.

“At least…stop…” Baz is losing the thread of his sentence and I think I see a tinge of pink on the tips of his ears. “Flirting with…men.”

“Why? Not what you’re into?”

“No, it’s not that…” Baz is stuttering. I want to smooth the stress from between his eyes. And I want to push more. To fight this dream battle with words rather than fists.

_ It would be nice to not need my fists. _

“I am. Interested. In…men.”

“And?”

“Crowley Snow, where do you think I live?”

“A small town without many options. So, like…why not?”

“Because,” he says, shoulders a parapet, with the drawbridge sealed up tight and the archers at the ready. “I haven’t exactly  _ told _ anyone.”

“Oh.” Well, now I feel like a prat. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Shoulders lower. An inch. I’ll take him apart. One inch at a time.

“This is unprecedented territory for both of us. It’s not your fault you were finally inside a body that people actually want to look at.”

“You know, I was just starting to think you weren’t the world’s biggest fucking prat. And then you went—”

“Relax, Snow,” he says, turning his chin up and looking at me. Those grey eyes get me every time. “I suppose this means you are—"

“A bit of an equal opportunist? I guess so.” I rub my hands through my hair, feeling the moisture of the sea clinging to the curls. “I don’t really think about it too much, but…yeah?”

Baz’s eyes flash, confused more than dismissive. “How do you  _ not _ . Think about it, I mean.”

I shrug. Sometimes shoulders are easier than words. “I’ve got a lot…going on. Sometimes it’s just easier not to think. About anything.”

“Including whether or not you are attracted to men?”

“I guess,” I say, trying to meet his eyes, which is a difficult thing in this exact moment.

“Noted,” Baz says, but there’s something wicked in the word. In the way his grey eyes narrow and how his lips almost smile. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” And I see Baz for what he is. Annoyingly fit, confidence in every cell of his six-foot something. Dark hair.  _ Fucking gorgeous. _

Nope. Not thinking about that.

“Just that, if we are ever in this situation again, I will ensure I return the favour.”

Fucking arrogant, pretentious, handsome… “Baz…”

“In fact.” I watch the realization wash over his face. My mouth hangs open a little and I almost miss his next words. “I think I’ll be a little bit less careful in any future engagements.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”  _ Fuck, he’s too smart to also be mean. He could do real damage. _

He’s smiling like a villain when the waves roll in.

**Simon, as himself**

The smell of risotto is a gift after the day I’ve had.

Possibelf stopped me after class to commend me on my participation. It was a highlight reel of Baz’s words emerging from my mouth—like when a sitcom does flashbacks to scenes that they’ve never shown on screen. I am out of step with my own life.

“Hey, Simon.” That voice belongs to an angel, with hair to match. I turn around and see Agatha, wiping her hands on her black apron.

Fuck. I fumble with the red cord at my wrist, desperate to ground myself. To try to have a normal conversation with a borderline celestial being. 

“Hey?”  _ Why did I phrase it like a question? What is wrong with me? _

“I really enjoyed last night. I had no idea you were so knowledgeable about equestrian.”

“Equestri-” wait. I was Baz yesterday, which means he was me, which means this is a conversation I didn’t have. “Yeah. Uh. Super interesting stuff.”

E-quest. Could be something like a digital adventure. Maybe online gaming or a D&D reference. Or an extreme sport. “Maybe we could walk to the tube together again tonight?” she says, catching a portion of her hair in her hands and rubbing it through her fingers.

_ Again?  _ I’m gonna kill him.

“That’d be nice!” I say, with much more enthusiasm than intended. This may be the closest thing to a date with Agatha that I’ll ever see. Maybe I can find the words and say them out loud and she may actually possibly like…me?

_ I need to google that word _ .

**Baz, dream**

Snow comes in hot, a comet burning up in the atmosphere. I’m barely corporeal before he’s thundering at me.

“Stop mucking around in my life!”

“Good evening, my fair cretin. To what do I owe the pleas—”

“Not the time for your fancy words.” He’s bellowing. “Or your fancy flirting.” And panting. “Just…” He’s so red, I think he might actually be breaking apart. “Just stop.”

“Seriously Snow, you’re going to have to be more specific. I’m genuinely confused. What have I done to merit such—”

“Agatha!” he roars. Sometimes, Snow is a force of nature. This is one of those times.

I hear the rolling waves against the sand and am suddenly grateful that we are in my dream space; were we in his, this train would be flying off the rails.

“Who is Agatha?”

“If you play dumb with me Pitch, I’m going to punch you in that perfect fucking face.”

It is pathetic, I think, that the only part of that sentence I noticed was Snow calling my face perfect. “Is she the one you’re clearly infatuated with? The blonde waitress?”

“I’m not infat…” His poor hair is a bird’s nest of stress and fizz. “Yeah. That one.”

“Well then, I barely spoke to her, and when I did, it was just pleasantries.” I’m being honest. She barely held my interest.

“You talked about horses.” He spits the words like they’re hot.

I blink. “Well, yes. She mentioned that she liked to ride and, while I had to stretch the truth a little to accommodate your horrific lack of international travel, I said that I was familiar with many of the various events held throughout the year.”

“How do you know all that shit?”

“My family does not show jump themselves, but I’m acquainted with the sport.” I say it like it’s obvious. Which it is. To me.

It is apparently  _ not _ obvious to Snow. He gives me his most potent scowl. “Of course you do. You rich arseholes are all the same—”

“That’s a gross generalization.” But an accurate one in this particular instant. Which is when I wonder—for the first time—what it must be like to shift between his life in the system and mine in the manor. From plastic spoons to silver ones.

“Saying things like that just proves my point.” In a way, he’s right

I take a deep breath and try to find my patience. Snow is visibly distraught, and someone needs to be the voice of reason.

“Snow, I’m serious. I meant no harm. I was just trying to be polite.”

“Yeah well, it worked too good.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve lost the plot. Please tell me why my basic efforts at polite conversation have ruined your love life. If anything, I’d have thought this would improve things.”

“How the fuck d’ya figure that?”

He’s called me condescending, accused me of looking down my nose at him, but right now, I can’t help myself. How can someone be so bright, so alive, so filled with magic, and yet so hopelessly thick? “I’m wooing the woman  _ you’re _ lusting after in  _ your _ body, Snow. As  _ you _ . She’s showing an interest in  _ you _ .”

“But…” The poor man is at his wit’s end and will be without any hair if he keeps this up. “I don’t know all the things you do. And…well…”

His words have stalled and so I give him a gentle push. “What happened?”

“I…I didn’t know what equestury was.”

_ Merlin and fucking Morganna. _ “Do you mean equestrian?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Horse racing.”

“Yeah. I know that  _ now _ .”

“But…” I’m at a loss. This poor impossible boy.

“I meant to look it up, but it got busy and…I just kinda winged it.”

“Oh.”

“Fucking oh,” he says, tilting his head back and staring up into the sky, which is an explosion of purples and blues. “I thought it was something like an e-sport? You know?” I can taste his embarrassment. “E-quest-ing.” 

“And that somehow evolved into a conversation about the connection between horse ownership and class politics through the ages?”

I think Snow wants to hit me. “Oh yeah. That’s  _ exactly _ how that went.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I think, if things were normal and I messed that up, she’d’ve laughed at me, you know? But cause you sorta knew a bunch of things yesterday…she thought I was messing with her? It…it was not good.”

“Well.” I pause, trying to decide how to proceed. “She clearly finds my charms more appealing than yours.” I can’t help myself. Blustering Snow is one of the best variations.

“Don’t mess with my love life.”

“Even if I find success where you’ve found only indifference?”

“You’re such a fucking prat.”

“You can thank me later.”

“Aggie would never go for anything you—”

“You sure about that?”

I swear that there is steam coming out of his ears. Perhaps Snow is an off-brand variation of prince charming, who turns back into a steam engine at dawn. His breathy grunts could be confused for the chug-chug-chug of an older model.

“Use your words, Snow.”

“IT’S SIMON!”


	8. The Ocean and the Underground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rainbow tattoos, pink lightening bolts, small hurts and intentional slights.

**Baz, as Simon**

I wake up to the feeling of hospital linens and something sharp digging into my neck. A squawking alarm— _Simon’s alarm_ —is blaring out of that horrific flip phone.

_Merlin, not again._ We’ve been switching at random for more than a week, every couple of days, with no obvious trigger and no end in sight. There are a whole host of reasons why swapping bodies with a stranger is horrifically inconvenient, _but_ _Simon’s magic…._

A minute. Maybe. That’s all I get. Until that oppressive feeling in my chest comes crushing back.

Snow is Atlas, with the whole fucking world on his shoulders. How he hasn’t just shrugged—to borrow the titular line—is beyond me. A part of me wants to tell him as much. _Just let it all go, Snow. I’m sure you could. I’m sure part of you wants to._

I’ve visited the Catacombs every day since I first met Simon Snow and felt his magic, smokey and thick and utterly overpowering. Since I discovered with a certainty that scared me that magic was real.

That the history of magic and the House of Pitch may not be all fiction. That maybe—just maybe—some of the magic that survives in Simon could live inside of me too. 

It’s a strange thing, to have your deepest desires confirmed, to see the faith in which your entire life has been steeped look back at you through plain blue eyes.

And so I sit in front of the entrance to her grave, and I try to make fire dance in my fingertips. And I sulk. Because now, now that it’s real, I have no idea what to do.

_Find Simon Snow._

_Terrorize Simon Snow._

_Kiss Simon Snow._

The foghorn of an alarm whales its moaning call to no one but me.

_Break Simon Snow’s fucking mobile._

I know that some boundaries shouldn’t be crossed—permenent damage of the other’s property, for instance—but the desire to make an exception for that fucking phone and pitch it in front of a moving train is palpable.

I cast my eyes around the room, desperate for a distraction from my bubbling rage and the magic it pokes awake.

There isn’t a splash of Simon in any other part of this tiny flat. No drawings, no details, not even shoes on the welcome mat. The rest of this place belongs to the man with the wild eyes, whose revolution ran off without him. He screams at the television sometimes, the synthetic light turning the whites manic.

I wonder if this is why Simon keeps everything holed up so tight, if this is why he keeps his bicycle in the corner or the three pairs of shoes under his bed, or his winter coat hanging from the curtain rod, or a figurine of goat, or three mugs tucked onto a shelf, or a thousand other things.

I make a mental note to ask him. I’ll sit next to him in the sand and hope that he’ll answer me and that I’ll remember the conversation when I wake up. 

_Saturday_. I’ve never been in Snow’s body on a weekend before.

_Perhaps I’ll start with a bath._

A vision of curdling caulking and brown porcelain makes me shudder. _Or maybe not._ The tub, I remember, is a travesty. 

_Who the fuck am I kidding?_ This entire room is a travesty. 

My fingers have been itching to tidy, poised and ready to push Simon’s disarray into a particular kind of order. I suppose (the thought is a dangerous thing) I suppose I could give in to the urges and just…clean?

Tidying another person’s space is both vile and intimate. I pitch all socks, crusty or otherwise, into the laundry basket.

I divine Snow’s future in pencil shavings and spend long minutes staring at the drawings on his walls. The lines are confident and earnest in a way the rest of him is not and there is a secret part of me that wants to tell him so.

When I settle into the lumpy tub (still off-white, despite my best intentions), the room is transformed. For a moment, as I survey my handiwork naked in the middle of the ensuite, I feel like I have untangled a hurricane—that the place finally has some spick and some span.

These self-satisfied thoughts last about two seconds, until other intrusive thoughts regarding my state of undress start to muscle their way into the spotlight. It’s hard not to think about the person whose body you’re inhabiting when you’re naked in a bathtub—a clean one, with a fucking loofah, an oat-scented body wash, and a shampoo and conditioner that will be kind to Snow’s thick locks of curly gold.

_I had a day off and I spent it trying to take care of Simon Snow._

I doubt he’ll see it that way, but all the same. He’s naked (I’m naked) (I still haven’t quite figured out how to process possessives) and I’m trying not to look. It feels indecent somehow. Even if the sight of him makes me…yearn.

_Yearn_. Fuck. Pathetic. 

The air is thick with steam, droplets condensing, my lungs damp. I watch a single drop zig zag down my chest (his chest), slaloming between freckles, lower

and then lower.

_No._

I jerk upwards in the tub, sending a small wave up and over the edges _. NO._ I need to think about something else. Any and all vaguely fond feelings should take a permanent vacation. I don’t want…I can’t handle being rejected by this golden idiot.

I spot a razor sitting on the edge of the toilet.

_I need more hostility and less yearning. That might do it._

It looks like the perfect kind of distraction.

I lean out of the tub and reach for the razor.

It’s an escalation, to be sure. I know that I’m crossing a line and that Simon Snow will take this as an explicit act of war. My hand hesitates and for a moment and I almost back down.

_It was just an idea. A stupid, juvenile prank._

But then I imagine the way his eyes will flash. How he’ll bluster if I can provoke him (he’s beautiful when he blusters). Maybe he’ll crowd me, grab me by my collar.

The idea is not entirely unappealing and imagining him, close, in my space with nothing to temper the desire to just…rile him up.

I pick up the razor and start at the base of his ankle. 

**Baz, dream**

The dream eases into the station, all hydraulics and metal sighs, and then picks up speed as I begin to find my footing. 

_Is this a train?_

At first, I almost don’t recognize the cadence—I have few opportunities to take the train. A gentle clopping noise, so far removed from the horse drawn carriage as a mode of transport, but churning around and around just the same.

_I am on a train._

Snow is walking back and forth, wearing a path in the floor, waiting for something. For someone. For me.

_Why are we on a train?_

There are no passengers but us. The world is racing by outside and Snow’s blue eyes have found me.

They always do.

“What the fuck did you do to my room?”

“Your room?” I say, catching his anger between my teeth. The memories are still filtering in, puzzle pieces knitting themselves together into an image of a day in the life. But Snow is faster out of the gate this time.

“It’s…” He’s pulling at his curls, gold bright between fingers. “It’s…”

“Is _clean_ the word you’re looking for?”

“Fuck off.”

“Why are we on a train?” It seems the more important question.

“Why the fuck did you clean my room?”

I try to pretend that there isn’t a small part of me that’s curled in a corner, disappointed that my first (and now last) effort at kindness has ended in disaster. “It’s my room too!”

“Is not!”

“It is, you fucking troglodyte. I am now a fifty percent stakeholder in the spaces where you live your life.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Why are we quibbling about fault?”

“Because…” Snow is not a man of words. They seem to catch him off guard. Or perhaps there are so many hiding behind that gilded skull of his that they crowd the exit all at once. “Cause I can’t find…cause things aren’t…cause you moved! Fuck. I just.”

“Take a breath, Snow. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“First names are for people who can keep their spaces tidy.”

“Fuck off.” He takes a breath and tries again. “Look, it’s the only space in the whole fucking world that’s mine and now it’s not anymore.”

_Oh._

“Putting things in order doesn’t change that, you actual clump-of-rocks numpty.” Why must my default position always be adversarial? For once, could I reach across the space between us and pat his shoulder or take his hand, or do something other than take a swing?

“Clump of rocks? What the fuck are you talking about?” he says, and I realize that numpties are made up magical creatures and that Simon doesn’t know a thing about them. About my family’s obsession with magic. About what it means (what he means) to me. 

He’s still angry, but it’s seeping out through the slump in his shoulders.

“Numpties,” I say, settling down onto one of the plastic seats and looking out the window. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Tell me anyway,” Snow says, and I want to. 

“What if we run out of time?” I say.

“Then we do.” His words are so sincere that my chest feels tight. 

I swallow and change the subject. “Why are we on a fucking train?” Is this Snow’s dreamscape? The place he creates when he closes his eyes?

“Dunno,” he answers me. “Probably cause it’s where I go sometimes. When Davy’s on a bender. Or, when I lived in the group homes, and other kids would have their…people over.” He blushes.

“People?”

“You know what I mean.” He swallows and I watch his neck. And remind myself to let my fingers trace his Adam’s apple the next time I have full custody of his skin. “It was…loud. So I’d come here.”

“By here, do you mean…”

“The underground.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

Another shrug. Another sentence lost in the slope of his shoulders. “It was calm. It was moving. It was distance and it never went to sleep.”

There’s a long silence. I try not to count the seconds. I’m never sure how long we’ll get. And I never want to leave. Right now, the idea of Simon waking up with that particular expression on his face is not one that I can bear.

“Numpties,” I say, clearing my throat. “Are magical creatures.”

“Please don’t fuck around with me right now.”

“I’m not. I’m from a long line of mages, Snow.”

“Like hell you are.”

“The House of Pitch. Granted,” I say, like it’s a concession, and, sitting next to the single most powerful mage alive, I suppose it is. “We lost our magic, or the knowledge about how to use it hundreds of years ago.”

“Sounds like a fairy tale.”

_The number of times I’d had that same thought. Until I met you, Simon._ I yearn (that fucking yearning) to let him hear it. “It does. It did. Until I met…you.” And out slips a kindness.

Plain blue looks up at me from across the aisle. “You promise you’re not messing with me?”

“My mother,” I say, nearly choking on the words, “and her parents, all the way back, have always believed. It’s a birthright. Traditions that we hold on to. That we pass down.” I could kiss the freckle under his eye and die happy. 

Vulnerability squeezes into the spaces between the seats, in the inch between his hand and mine. “I…I wanted to leave,” I say, out loud, for the first time. “I wanted to run away from my mother and the history and everything to do with magic—it never mattered which university, just that it wasn’t here. Somewhere I didn’t have to stare at the reminder, every goddamn day, that she was wrong and that she died without ever really seeing it. Seeing magic.” _Seeing you._ “I told everyone I was going to stay.” I whisper this last line. Like a confession. Like a prayer.

“And now?” If a look could melt my bones, it would be this one.

I open my mouth, close it again, and stare past him out the window.

“Numpties,” I say, “are basically trolls made of rocks.”

“Okay, your ancestors definitely got that one wrong.” Simon doesn’t push. And I don’t run away.

“I know,” I say, and, in spite of my efforts to stop it, a laugh lurches out of my chest.

I look up at his face, and find a smile to match.

But only for a moment. Because, as we hurtle through the bowls of London, the details start to blur. Waves crashing over the canvas and dragging us back into the sea.

I wake up in a mattress that is too big under a comforter that isn’t really that much nicer than his thin blanket a thousand miles away.

For a moment, I feel something like tinder in my heart. 

Until I open my eyes. And see, written in black fucking sharpie, “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO MY ROOM?” written across my ceiling.

I am going to kill that fucking numpty. His suffering will be eternal and grievous. He will look back on this day and weep with regret. I will make him pay.

And I’ll enjoy every minute of it. Because it’s another minute with him.

**Simon, as himself**

I knew that my slacks were acting dodgy. The way that they glided on like I’d been coated in butter. And the fabric…it had no business being so soft. I flopped onto my single mattress, yanking them off, turning them inside out, and inspecting for any signs of foul play.

_There’s a crafty edge to that lanky fuck. I wouldn’t put it past him to sabotage my clothing._

But, apart from a bit of pilling, everything looks above board. I’m just starting to slip them back on, crooning against the softness, when I notice something.

Or, more specifically, _the absence_ of something.

It’s not the slacks.

_It’s my legs._

The forest of dark blonde hair that used to cover my thighs and my calves…it’s gone.

It’s all gone.

_He shaved my legs._

The realization takes a moment to settle.

_He shaved my fucking legs._

I’ve stalled with one leg in and one leg out, too stunned to move.

I’m going to kill him.

_No._ I’m going to make him pay.

“You’re looking better, you know that?” Penny says to me as we push the door to BodyCare open. A gentle tingle welcomes us inside (or alerts the cashier to potential shoplifters. I like to assume the former).

“What?” I say, hyper-focused on the task in front of me. I have a list of materials, meticulously scrawled in messy loops, clutched in my hand. 

“Are you updating your beauty regime?” Penny asks, only half sarcastically. 

“I’m not going to buy anything. I’ll do that later.” I don’t add that I’ll do it when I’m inside Baz. When it’s his body I’m modifying without permission.

_He shouldn’t have shaved my fucking legs._

My magic starts to simmer. Even the thought of him sets me on edge. I let my fingers trace over the red cord on my wrist, imagining my stress and magic disappearing into the fibres. 

“Well, whatever those aliens are doing to you—”

“I’ve not been abducted by aliens, Pen.”

“You seem…” she pauses, her face taking on the pensive I’m-looking-for-a-word expression. “Fuller. Like your shit is more…together. Like you can pass a test. Like you want to.”

“Yeah, yeah, go aliens,” I say, waving a hand and dipping back to the personal grooming aisle. But, as I let my fingers trail along the countless boxes and metal torture devices, I realize that she might have a point.

I’ve been…studying. It’s usually when I’m Baz and in a place where my magic isn’t dissecting my insides and people aren’t chasing me and Davy isn’t breathing down my neck. And it’s mostly because Baz is mortified that we will swap on a day he has to write an exam.

_But still._

“You’ve already been accepted to a thousand posh universities. What’s the fucking point?” I’d asked him, one night as a train spirited us away.

“They won’t take me if I don't get the grades I need, Snow. Don’t you know this?”

Penny clucks her tongue and I realize I’m frozen in place.

“The beauty industry is properly fucked, isn’t it?” I say, looking at some metal thing that attaches to eyelashes. “Why the fuck do we pressure people into this shit?”

“That’s bordering on profound, Simon. I’m proud of you.”

“Fuck off and help me figure out which of these are waxing strips,” I say.

**Baz, as himself**

I’m waging a war of small hurts and intentional slights. Of things done to disrupt and deride. I can’t help myself. (I’m disturbed. Ask anyone.)

Teasing Snow is to play with fire. We are moths, we dance to the death around a flame neither of us understands. 

I’m myself today, and it’s such a relief to shower in my own body, without the desire and then the guilt, and then my body (his body) showing me how much I want. Being back in my own skin, I can let my mind dwell on the things I never should have seen. On the body of a man hundreds of miles away who is too ridiculous to enjoy. It’s a purely physical reaction. It’s certainly not my fault.

_Golden skin, stretching out and covered in a world of freckles._

I want to kiss them. Every single one.

_Strong arms and shoulders that cradle the world._

The steam is thick and I breathe it in. I wonder what his body would feel like, damp and hot against mine, if we could exist in the same space just once.

I wonder if his lips would feel soft. I wonder if he would kiss me like a lion or a lamb.

_The scars on his knuckles._

I reach down.

_The way his chest feels like an open field._

I wrap my fingers around myself.

And that is when I notice…

a flash of bright pink?

My hair…down there…is bright fucking pink! And shaped, with the sureness of someone with a steady drawing hand and an axe to grind, into a fucking lightning bolt.

The amount of research that went into this, the countless YouTube tutorials about bleaching and shaping, about trimming hair without taking it all at once, must’ve been excessive. I would admire the effort if he had done this to someone else—to _anyone_ else.

But he didn’t do it to someone else; he did it to me.

_You have violated my dignity, Snow. In a way that I will not accept._

The things I am going to do to him.

“You think you can just intrude on my private wanking time?” I mumble, trying to decide if I want to rescue my flagging erection. _But giving up means that that imbecile wins. I will not, cannot, concede even an inch._

_Literally._

I lean against the tile and squeeze my eyes closed, shutting out the world where I have pink fucking pubic hair. I’ll deal with that later. But for now?

For now, as I race towards something like bliss, my guilt has walked the plank. Behind the screens of my eyelids, Snow is on his knees. And I focus on what my hands would feel like, wrapped around those golden curls, pulling him against me, again and again and again.

**Simon, as himself**

I’m walking out of my ensuite, naked but for the towel around my neck, when I catch a glimpse of something in the mirror.

Dread is a stone in my stomach. I scoot across my room like a king crab until my arse is almost flush with the mirror. I’m scuttling and craning my neck to try and see it better and maybe dread is the antithesis of my magic, because it isn’t flaring to life the way it normally would.

I can’t be sure how long it was there. Before I plaited Baz’s hair into matching French braids and left them in overnight? (Imagining his face when he woke up in pigtails and nothing else was a gift. Pretentious panic, bottled for my pleasure.) Before I put coriander in his fancy shampoo (which backfired, cause I forgot and then used it when I was still in his stupid body and smelled like a taco).

I wonder if it hurt. If he cringed as the needles carved something forever into his (my) skin.

The mirror used to be coated in grime and dirt, but Baz’s deep clean of my room spared not a single square inch. Which is why, as I squint and pull the skin of my butt up just high enough, I can see it. In all of its fucking glory.

A rainbow tattoo on my fucking right arse cheek.

This is a step too far. It’s a permanent branding from Basilton fucking Pitch.

“I can’t believe this!” I scream to no one. “The fucker got me tattooed!”

I stumble over to my nightstand and fumble for my phone.

_Simon (7:43 pm): SOS PEN IM COMING OVER APAS_

**Penny (7:46 pm): You mean ASAP right?**

_Simon (7:46 pm): not the fukcing time to correct my grammer_

**Penny (7:47 pm): I’m sighing right now. I want you to know that.**

**Penny (7:47 pm): Are you sure that Davy won’t get upset?**

_Simon (7:48 pm): dont fucking care. i need your eyes on this._

_Simon (7:48 pm): i need help_

_Simon (7:48 pm): i…i need you to convince me not to kill someone_

**Penny (7:49 pm): I’ll tell my mum. Come in the back entrance and don’t wake the dogs.**

I never thought I’d see the day where my pants were down around my ankles in front of Penelope Bunce. She’s a sister to me, really, and not the kind of sister who sees me in any state of undress.

When I started to remove my jeans, Penny nearly decked me. “Simon, I don’t know where you got the idea that we are anything more than friends, but—”

“No!” And I’d thought the day couldn’t get any worse. “There’s…uh…something I need you to look at.”

She glared at me with an intensity that was properly scary. “Please?” I croaked in my saddest voice.

Which is how I ended up on her bedspread, my pants pulled down, desperate for her help. _(Dirty, fuck, this all sounds so dirty. I’m gonna fucking kill him.)_

“This is weird!” Penny says, scrunching up her nose and inching closer to the splash of colour. “Why can’t you just do this yourself?”

“I can’t get a good look. It’s in my blind spot!”

Penny rolls her eyes and creeps a little closer. “If you ever have a boil or a sore or anything else down there, I want nothing to do with it.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t serious.” I’m a step away from begging. 

“I’m sorry, but how is a rainbow on your backside in any way serious?”

I ignore that. “Do you think this is real?”

“Sorry to ask the obvious question, but how do you not know the answer to that?”

I really should’ve planned what I was going to say. At the very least, I should’ve anticipated her bottomless curiosity. It’s Penny after all. “I…uh…” _Reasons someone would get a tattoo they don’t remember_... “Got a bit drunk.”

Penny takes a step away from my bare arse and glares at me. “You. Got drunk.” The sentences are statements of fact, and not questions. Because she clearly doesn’t believe me.

“Yup.” I can out-stubborn her inquiry.

“With who?”

_Fuck_. “Alone.” 

“On what?” It’s the lightning round with Penelope Bunce and I was not prepared.

I cast my mind around for the name of some kind of alcohol. Any kind. “Gin.” 

“Gin and…” _Shit_ . _People usually mix things with their liquor. That’s a thing, right?_

_Fuck. I dunno._ “Um…Just gin.”

“Straight?” Penny’s look is pure incredulity, but I can out-stubborn that too. “Straight shots of gin?”

“Yup.” Single syllables win arguments. I’m sure that they do.

“Simon—”

I cut right through the mix of pity and disbelief. “Look, Penny, can you just tell me if it’s real. And how I can get it removed?”

“Sure Si,” she says after looking at me, and down at the floor, and then back at me again “You’re off the hook. It’s just a temporary tattoo. See? It’s starting to peel a little.”

“Thank fucking god.”

“Indeed,” she says, and I know that, while we may be at the end of this conversation, that Penny is not going to let this go.

So much for stealthy body swaps. I don’t know what I’m going to do if Penny figures this out. It’s not that I don’t trust her. I do. More than anyone else in my life. It’s just that…I’ve tried so hard to keep my magic under wraps. Unknowable. Secret.

I have nothing and the universe is already out to get me. I don’t want to live in a world where I have something another person could want. I’m not sure I’d survive it.

I’ve painted over that part of me. Done my best to coat it in enough layers that the truth doesn’t seep through. And if Penny sees this thing that’s happening, what if that’s just the beginning? What if my paint starts to chip away, flaking until I’m known and completely exposed? In a way that is far worse than my current position, half naked on my best mate’s bed. _(Fuck, I’m going to kill him.)_

I just…can’t.

I pull my pants up and scuttle into the corner of her bed. “Thanks. For doing that.”

Penny looks at me. She looks at me and just keeps looking.

I decide to let the tattoo peel on its own. No matter how slowly the colours erode, no matter how annoying it is to see a reminder of Baz Pitch on my arse, I still resist the urge to scrub it off. I will not give him the satisfaction of knowing I noticed. Fuck that fucker. Fuck him to fucking hell.

**Baz, dream**

I bring us to the ocean and Snow brings us to the underground. It’s bizarre, the settings of our unconscious minds, and how they pop up for a stranger like a picture book.

If I stare at the details too long, I start to make meaning out of nonsense. Dreams are neural pathways. Dreams do not explain the way I yearn for waves that breathe with the shore. Dreams do not crack the spine of my regret and offer up a mirror for everything I’ll miss.

The world keeps fucking moving on. And I’m a part of it.

Today, we’re dipping into Snow’s subconscious, and I feel my feet sway unsteadily as the train car jerks.

The view is always a blur of something vaguely London, a picture taken too quickly, with no definition to speak of.

“Careful,” he says, words low and rumbling. Matching the internal machinations of the gliding mechanical monolith.

_He doesn’t sound angry, but I have enough for the both of us._

“You,” I say, wrapping one hand around a plastic strap hanging from the ceiling. I aim to look menacing, but my ululating torso does little to help me menace at him. _I’m going to gut you, Simon fucking Snow. As soon as I find my balance._

Still, I persist. “You dyed my...” My cheeks are on fire before I can stop them. “You know what you did.”

I’m shaking with fury but it has no path out of me. Lightning without a rod.

Snow at least has the decency to look a bit embarrassed—although I would’ve preferred ashamed. Deferent. (Can’t win them all, I suppose.)

“Maybe you’re right. It’s gone a bit far, yeah?”

_Oh, now he thinks it’s gone too far._

“A bit?” My voice betrays me and squeaks. I want to peel him like an orange with my fingernails.

I decide to get closer, instead. Crowding into his space. Close enough to see his chest rise and fall. Close enough to kiss.

“I’d be sorrier if you hadn’t started it,” he says, and I suddenly hate his ability to stand so steadily as the train lurches around yet another bend. 

“If you’re still fixated on my cleaning your flat, you’re an ungrateful wretch with the intellect of a fucking sand dollar.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” he says, and has the audacity to grin. I can see a tiny dimple, I’m that close.

“Don’t press me, Snow.”

“Simon,” he says, his familiar insistence only strengthening my desire to deny him the moniker.

“Whatever,” I say, and then take a deep breath. _If I breathe too deeply, my chest might touch his._

“I think we should call it,” Simon says. “I’m tired of fighting. Truce?”

“You want a truce?” I ask, and I can’t decide if I’m relieved. “You mutilated my body—”

“It wasn’t—”

I don’t want to hear what he thought _it_ was. I don’t want to think about him, staring down at my…nope. Can’t think about that. “No more harassment until we’re through this? Is that what you want?”

Snow rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t call it harassment."

“The running list of ways you’ve offended my decency is ever expanding, Snow. Would you like a tour?” I am impressed by my own restraint when I’d like to be ripping his spine out of his skin and dumping his guts into the sea.

I watch Snow as he decides that the argument he wanted is not worth having. He’s in that same oversized t-shirt I wore that first night we met in the waves of an ocean that does not exist.

“Truce,” he says, sticking one hand into the space between us. Freckled forearms should not captivate in this way. I should be able to look away.

The scarred knuckles, the nails, cut as short as they can go. I should not be so keenly aware that we haven’t touched in this space. That he’s never volunteered any kind of physical intimacy and that I’ve never offered. The prospect of a hand should not be this overwhelming, considering the other parts of him I’ve seen.

And yet.

I feel something in my gut. Something like a hook—no, more like a string. Like he’s wrapped his blemished fingers in my intestines and is weaving a tapestry.

My irritation didn’t stand a chance. I melt for him.

“Truce,” I say, sure as I’ve ever been that this is where I’m meant to be. I reach into the space that he’s created with…could this be called kindness? Not quite. But it would be a close thing.

My fingers slip into his hand, calluses meeting calluses. I’m almost surprised. A part of me was so sure he was made of dreams, and you cannot hold dreams in your hands.

“We should’ve been spending our time trying to figure out why this is happening. Why aren’t we doing that?” He’s still holding onto my hand.

I want to launch word projectiles across the distance between us. My language is sharp, the ends tapered. Instead, “Quite right,” I say.

My hand and his hand, still meeting in the middle.

Infinitesimal in the grand scheme of everything. A moment in a life. But it feels like the last puzzle piece. Like possibility shaded in. 

_I don’t want to let go._

The train crests another corner, but I’m suddenly feeling rather steady.

“I kinda thought of you as my nemesis?” Simon says, feet shuffling a little closer.

“How hopelessly dramatic.” I’m surprised that the words manage themselves; affection is grinding the gears.

“S’not that weird,” he says. “You can be properly evil.”

I don’t bother with a rebuttal; my refutation would fall on deaf ears. “What would that make you?”

“The hero,” he says. “Obviously.”

“The chosen one,” I say, each syllable a sardonic echo of what was once a fairy tale I wanted to believe. “Come to save the day.”

**Simon, as himself**

I don’t know when it started, but the pages of my notebooks are filled with a single theme. Dark hair. Long eyelashes.

My hand is moving and my mind isn’t doing anything on purpose. I’m lost in the lines and when I finally look up, I realize I’m sketching an aristocratic nose.

**Baz, as Simon**

I’m sitting at Snow’s desk when I find them, checking over his chemistry assignments, marking questions with mistakes in a blue pen (I have no desire to bleed Snow’s papers dry) (I’m not a vampire).

Boredom and the congested snores of Davy coming from the living room have made restless thoughts morph into restless hands.

I set his work aside and start to smooth the wrinkles of his desk into something purposeful (to Snow’s credit, the room has stayed, if not clean, then tidy, since the day I scrubbed it raw). We’ve settled into…something almost domestic in the midst of the madness. 

One of Snow’s sketchbooks is open on an old biology text. I pick it up, wondering if it’s an invasion or a betrayal of some kind, because this feels personal in a way I can’t quite articulate. But my (his?) restless fingers will not be denied.

The lines are just as confident as the ones on the walls, but they’re different. They’re creating a person from two dimensions, they’re emotion in charcoal, they’re…well, they’re all of me. 


	9. The Rest of Him Swallowing the Rest of Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Indie lullabies, grinding gears, the importance of washing your legs, and two boys kneeling on the edge of the world.

**Simon, as Baz**

Things I know about the dude who lives part time in my skin.

I know his phone number. It’s a bit creepy, but I couldn’t help it. About a week into the switching, I memorized his mobile. Wrote the number into one of his books and repeated it over and over.

The memories after I wake up are like sandcastles on the edge of the ocean. It’s not long until the tides of my everyday take all of the details away. But I repeated it. Over and over. And wrote down what I remembered on my palm as soon as I woke up.

There is a box under his bed. Plain, black, rectangular. There’s nothing special about it, nothing that stands out or screams private, but I don’t need to be told not to go in there.

It makes me wonder about Baz’s secrets, though. About the parts of himself that I don’t get to know, even as I live inside of his life.

“The House of Pitch is a stupidly fancy name for a stupidly fancy place,” I say as the dream washes in on the waves. “You’re all just…way too…”

“Dignified?”

“No.”

“Responsible?”

“Fuck off, Baz.”

“I’ve got flattering adjectives for days, Snow. You’d best hurry up and arrive at your point.”

“Elitist,” I say, finally. “Posh. Dickish?”

“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“How do you expect anyone to see past the creepy exterior? To like what’s underneath.”

“Are you talking about me or my home?”

I decide to dodge that question. It’s approaching a knot of feelings I haven’t quite figured out how to untangle. “Why do you live in a gothic mansion, anyway?”

“It’s not gothic. It’s Victorian.”

“See, that there!” I say, waving a finger in his face. “You’re proving my fucking point.”

Baz is making this face—almost as if he’s trying to force his muscles _not_ to smile and it’s strange to see us here, behaving. It’s almost friendly.

“Your aunt is a proper banshee and a legit fucking crazy person,” I say, trying to break the spell. “It’s like she can smell me out when we’ve swapped.”

“Maybe she _can_ smell it,” Baz says, his lips twitching.

“Smell what?” The idea that Fiona has heat seeking eyeballs and a nose for trouble is a terrifying prospect.

“Magic,” Baz answers simply. 

“That woman has wanted to believe in something bigger than you or me or this place for her entire life,” he says, the next time we dream, and we stand together in the waves. “She wants the history she’s conjured up to be proven real. To jump off the pages of all the old books in the library and dance around for us. A dinner theatre of magical magnificence.”

“Was that your attempt at convincing me she’s not crazy?” I ask, more to rile him up than to argue.

He doesn’t take the bait, shrugging in a way that makes me feel like I’m looking in a mirror.

“Why do you live with your aunt anyway?” I sat.

And that’s how I learn that his mother died.

“There’s all kinds of rumours in town,” he says, that veneer of pretension thinning.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs again. “Numpty attacks. A clan of vampires come to punish the family for some ancient feud.” The sigh scrapes the bottom of his soul. “I love the whimsy in Sandside. I love that to be a Pitch is to also be something strange and outlandish. But I didn’t love that.”

“No?”

“My mother’s death is not a part of this fairy tale. It is not a story for their consumption or food for the rumour mill.”

“What really happened?”

Baz kicks some sand into the spray. “A fire.”

“Shit.”

“Shit indeed.” He’s quiet for a long time. I don’t mind. The skyline is clear and the water as soothing as a finger pressing silence into my lips.

“I think…Snow,” he finally says, and when looks up at me, there are tears in his eyes. “I think it was me.”

“No. Baz. How?”

He’s not listening, not really hearing me. The stopper has been pulled and a story is flowing.

“They said something about one-hundred-year electrical short circuiting. But—”

“But what?”

“I think I can…I can make fire. Sometimes. I think. Accidentally.”

“Show me.”

“Wouldn’t mean much in a dream,” Baz mumbles, but extends his hands, and I’m struck again by how different they were from mine. Calloused fingertips, but smooth and long. Clever hands.

A flame emerges from nowhere and starts to dance in the valley of his outstretched palm.

_Firemaker hands._

“Holy shit.”

“You see?” He is despair, unfiltered and bleeding.

“I see magic,” I say, and, in that moment, that is all I can think of. Because, up until that moment, I’d thought I was alone. The only person on this planet with this ocean of the spectacular, of the impossible, and of the painful. “You are magic.”

“You don’t understand, Snow. What if it was me?”

I want to take his hands, to see if they feel any different now that I know that magic has been there, to see if they are still warm. I don’t. I’m terrified that, if I touch him, Baz will shatter into a thousand jagged pieces.

“I couldn’t control it then; I can barely control it now. I used to have nightmares. What if…what if I lost control. And the magic that she dedicated her whole life to preserving ended up…”

_Magic can be ugly. It can take everything from you and leave you all burnt up._

“What if I’m the reason it all ended in flames?”

“Well,” I say, hoping that I somehow managed to get these words right. “I don’t think that’s the story.” He opens his mouth to argue, but I cut clean through. “But, if it is, then…” I gulp. “Well, then we match, don’t we?”

**Baz, as Himself**

Things I have learned about my fair-weather body companion.

First thing (of a thousand things). He does not wash his legs. 

“You’re in the shower,” he said one night, legs stretched out, bare ankles dipping into the sea. “And this hot water is just dripping down. Why would you need to wash them?”

“Are you seriously sitting here telling me that you don’t wash your legs!”

Snow looked at his ankles, bashful, almost. “Well, then you gotta bend and I just…the water cleans them well enough!”

“It really doesn’t,” I’d said.

“Well, at least I know you’re doing it for me now. A couple leg washes a week should get me through just fine.”

“You’re a menace,” I said. “An unmitigated disaster.”

Second thing (I know so many of his details). He doesn’t harbour feelings of resentment for the strange man with whom he shares a home. He doesn’t love Davy, but he doesn’t hate him either.

“Davy does it for the cheque,” Simon said as we tunnelled through the underground, plunging into the darkness of a tunnel. “They pay him to take care of me.”

“But he doesn’t.” My words are a blunt object, but I don’t understand. Someone should be paying attention, someone should be making sure that Simon Snow is being cared for. Someone...

“Sometimes it’s better that way,” Simon says, leaning his mop of curls against the grimy window. 

“Is that a thing people can do to children?”

“I’m not a child.”

“Not my point, Snow.”

“And anyway, it’s way better than most of the homes I’ve stayed in.”

And that, perhaps, is the most unsettling realization of all. That Simon’s present is far rosier than his past.

Third thing (I’ve seen so much of him). Simon Snow lives longer days than the rest of us.

I know, logically, that there are the same number of hours, no matter which body I spend them in. I know that the earth spins at the same speed on its axis whether I’m in London or Sandside, but still.

Never knowing when I’ll be able to eat, sharing a wall with someone whose core has gone rotten. And then school in a body that itches, with magic that makes my eyes water. And then work in a restaurant that bustles like a bee’s nest.

Things I know about Simon Snow. That no matter how much of him he lets me see, it will never be enough. I want it all.

**Simon, as Baz**

The dying afternoon sun is pulling back Baz’s breezy curtains as I lounge on his ridiculous bed. (What a thing, to do nothing. To lie here and just...be still. No questions. No shouting. No magic.) 

The bugger has the comfiest fucking pillows, and I could make sleeping on these a recreational sport. The fluffy down hugs my neck in just the right way, and the sunset is warm against my closed eyelids and…

_I don’t want to go back._

It isn’t so much a realization as it is a confession.

My head is doing that thing where the thoughts happen and I am not enjoying the show.

It’s not that I want to be Baz (this hair requires entirely too much maintenance). I don’t want to settle down on the hills of Sandside and tend to a flock of goats. Or is it a herd of goats? (Ebb would know). I don’t want this place or this life. But I do…

_Well._

I want something more than the shitty corner of the world where I grind out my days.

_I just want to feel…safe._

I don’t usually have time for self-pity. Tonight though, as someone else’s simple life puts mine to shame, I’m not sure I can go back. I’m not sure I know how.

I wonder what would happen if I just…refused to let it go. If I stayed up all night and forced the world’s hand. Would I switch with my eyes open? Would I be trapped, both awake and dreaming?

It is in this moment of self-flagellation that I see the car keys, poised on the edge of a dish, next to a smart looking wallet and a box of matches.

It feels like the way a television episode might introduce the beginning of a very bad decision. It feels like something Baz would not appreciate, and I’m actually not keen on pissing him off these days. Still, I decide to take hold of that plot and lean in.

When am I ever going to get the chance to drive a Jaguar, to drive at all? I pull my arms through Baz’s only hoodie (which I fished out of the back of his wardrobe) and scrape the keys off the dresser.

“Where are you going?” Fionna asks from her back on the sofa. She’s wrapped in a blanket, legs sprawled up and over the back, watching reruns of Golden Girls and drinking some kind of fancy liquor.

She’s such a cliché. One day, I think I’ll tell her so. But that feat is scarier than driving, and so I say, “For a drive,” and she doesn’t argue. 

“It’s almost twilight. Nearly magic hour,” she says, taking a quick sip. The ice cubes jangle. “Careful. You might see something,” she waggles her eyebrows, “not human.” 

“What?”

She ignores the questions. “Don’t stay out all night,” she says instead, dismissing me with a wave of her free hand and a sip of her drink.

I hear her manic cackle as I pull the front door closed behind me. (The woman’s still mad as a hatter, but exposure has made me weak. The feeling in my chest right now borders on fond.)

The Jag is a predator, all sleek lines and aerodynamic design, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. Zero to sixty in some ridiculously small number of seconds.

If I survive this, if Baz finds out (he always does, somehow), he’ll definitely throw me in front of a train. Some advanced mode of transport will carry me away into the afterlife.

Fuck. I could stand here, worrying about it until the sun rises and I find out if the body swaps are triggered by sleep or…

I could get in the goddamn car.

_“C’mon, Snow. I didn’t fancy you a coward.”_

I know it’s impossible. That I am not asleep and Baz is not here. But, as fear terrorizes my resolve, it’s his voice that I hear. I’m sure of it.

More than a tiny part of me wishes that more than a tiny part of him were here.

I get in the goddamn car.

“Right,” I say to no one. “I guess step one is to…turn you on? Isn’t it?”

The car has the audacity not to answer me.

Keys in ignition. How hard could that be?

_“Clutch in, Snow.”_

“What the fuck is a clutch?” I’m answering a voice in my head. This is not a good sign.

_“You were really going to do this alone?”_

“Clutch.” I look around the car. It’s somehow smaller on the inside. The opposite of a TARDIS, which is the benchmark for quality modes of transport. “Clutch clutch clutch.”

I look down at the floor. There are three pedals. Why the fuck are there three pedals?

_“Clutch, break, and gas. You need to push the clutch all the way to the floor and press the break to start this car. Do you think you can do that?”_

Okay, this is starting to get proper creepy. Maybe Baz’s memories are starting to stick around? Like his body, but with the dregs left behind?

_Whatever._ Dregs of Baz are the best I’ve got. I made the decision to do this. And now I’m gonna follow through.

I push down hard on the middle pedal (clutch, I hope. Oh god, what happens if I’m wrong?) and the break. With trembling fingers, I force the keys into the ignition and (before good sense or second guessing can divert me), I turn the car over.

The Jaguar roars to life, headlights glaring down the drive.

“I did it, Baz!” I say.

_“Now you just have to get out of first gear.”_

“Right,” I say, grabbing the gear shift with one confident hand and lurching it up into what I’m pretty sure is first. There’s a little diagram on the handle. Makes it easy. I can definitely do this.

Letting my foot relax.

Easing off the break.

Letting the clutch go—

—And then lurching forward like a slingshot and squelching to a messy halt.

“I don’t understand…”

_“Oh, Simon.”_

“Fuck off, Baz. You shouldn’t manage this much attitude in a memory.”

I swear, he’s not here, but I know that, somewhere, he’s grinning.

_“You stalled. That’s what happens when you let the clutch out too quickly without giving the engine a little bit of gas.”_

“I…did not know that,” I say.

_“Try again. Same thing to start, but this time, try to find that sweet spot. Where you give the car just enough of a push and slowly release the clutch. It’s a bit of an art form, Snow. Which should make you a natural.”_

My intestines are noodles someone is trying to force through a strainer. The gear shift is worn and rounded and even though it’s just a car and it’s just driving and I’m afraid.

_You can do this, Snow._

_Fuck._ I wonder if he would be nice? In a place that is outside of my imagination. I wonder if he would blunt his words for me. If he would lay his hand on top of mine and guide me from first to second. If his voice would be soft, teaching me what to do. I wonder if we will ever do this right and meet properly. If he came to me or I came to him.

_I want to meet him._

Isn’t that something.

_Don’t think._

I want to hold him.

_Don’t think._

I want to kiss him.

_Don’t think._

I let the clutch out and rev the gas. Noise explodes against the dying light and I lurch out of the driveway.

“Holy shit!” I’m screaming, but it’s not all fear. “I’ve done it.”

_“You’re doing it.”_

“I’m doing it!”

_“Now shift into second, you numpty, before you take ten years off the life of my car.”_

“Fuck!” But somehow, I do.

…

I don’t know how long I’ve been driving. I do know that the night’s rolled in and I’m not planning on sleeping.

I crank roll the automatic windows down. A sigh slips through my lips as the air hits my face: a sigh made of nerves and something ugly and stunted, being released. As the wind buffets my cheeks, I imagine the cold night air picking up all of my noxious fumes and carrying them away. Mixing whatever is wrong with me with whatever is right out there. Diluting.

I’m gobbling the yellow lines like a ravenous Pacman. The telephone poles count the time.

I’ve found my way into fifth gear and I’m on the motorway, with pavement unfurling in front of me.

_I don’t want to go back._

Realization. Confession. Whatever the fuck this feeling is, the truth of it makes my teeth ache. Is running away such a bad thing? All the stories seem to think so. Heroes don’t turn their backs on a fight, they don’t lay down and take it or abandon the struggle.

I told Baz I was the hero.

“I don’t wanna go back.”

I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t know when it started.

“Fuck, I wish I weren’t alone right now.” I’m talking to the wind. “It’d be nice to have someone to run out the road with.”

_“I’m here, Simon.”_

I pretend it’s real. I savour the way his voice settles all around me and imagine what it would be like if he were _actually_ here.

He would hover in the passenger seat, dark hair loose and blowing around his face, catching in his lips when he smiled. He might even put his long legs up on the dash. Baz would slip off his shoes, socked feet pulled into his chest. Relaxed. Eyes closed. As the night flies by us.

Maybe if I stay up, I can just…stay.

The wind wipes my tears from my cheeks. The ache in my chest burns off. Night air diffuses the heat.

There are no roadside lamps out here. Just darkness folding into darkness. If I got lost, I’d be lost forever, a tiny pinprick of weaving into the night—a firefly crossing the midnight ocean.

For a while, I thought I felt a hand resting on top of mine, a gesture so small it manages to be big. But I’m sure I imagined it, that my loneliness is conjuring ghosts.

I’m not sure when I change my mind, how many miles I travel before turning back. My eyes are rubbed raw with exhaustion and every yawn threatens to sink me.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, on a road where I am the sole traveller, my despair wears itself thin.

I could never take this from Baz. This is his world, his town, filled with his problems.

And it’s time to return to my own.

As the house comes back into view ( _“It’s not Gothic. It’s Victorian”_ ) _,_ I try to down shift and succeed only in grinding gears.

Fiona probably heard that.

Still, I try to close the door with a tender touch. I’m pretty sure that’s what Baz would want.

And I fall asleep running my fingers through Baz’s hair.

**Baz, as Simon**

My life is filled with dreams, with a life in another man’s body, and with feelings that are starting to overwhelm everything else. I think my colours are starting to blend and I’m not sure I can keep the worlds from touching. From blending and bleeding. I’m starting to wonder where I stop and where Snow begins.

I think we drove together. I think he tried to drive my car. I think that I helped him.

_Which couldn’t have fucking happened._ This should be the strangest part, because I defied every law that physicists have used to define what is possible in this world. But it’s not.

What’s stranger is that…I wanted to. To be with him. To drive with him. To help him. I wanted to hold his hand—I think I did.

I’ll have to ask him.

I’m scared to ask him.

I’m just…scared.

Which might be why I did it. I honestly can’t untangle this mess of colour and memory and dreams. It’s all a blur on a canvas I’m not convinced amounts to anything.

…

My entire body aches, toes cramped into shoes with no arch support, the cheap white cotton clinging to my (his) tawny skin, but I let my feet carry me along. 

It was a long day, I was tired, stress was wearing at my muscles and tendons, fatigue thick in my blood. Still, I don’t know why I did it.

She was wiping a table down at the end of the evening.

The Green Door was a madhouse tonight, a constant stream of bodies filling the seats. During the supper rush, we’d had a line into the lounge and out the front. Laughter tinkled like the cocktail glasses, shoulders pressed against shoulders, and the volume of the place was turned up to its maximum. It was manic but so alive.

_I don’t hate this,_ I’d realized. In the crush of orders and refills and polite smiles and my perfect recitation of the specials and wine menu, I’d actually been…enjoying myself.

“Thank you for the help tonight, Wellbelove.” I’d seen her last name on the schedule and had taken to calling her by it. She’d seemed almost pleased.

“I don’t know if I love or hate nights like this,” she said, not looking up from the table. I could see her face in the gleaming reflection.

“It helps with tips,” I said, and it was true. I turned down my pride and turned up my charm. With Snow’s adorable presentation and my less-awkward coordination, we made for the perfect server.

“Yes,” she said, but her tone sounded sad; her words were heavy. “Tips.” She laughed, a tinkling little thing. I could almost see what Snow loves about her. “People measuring what they see, what I show them, in pounds and pence.”

“It is a bit objectifying, isn’t it?” I said, seeing a glimpse of her, the real her, for the first time.

“Most people like it. Someone sweet. Someone who can make them feel good and safe for a little while.”

Some of Snow’s words rose in the back of my mind.

“You are happily ever after, in a person.”

Her laugh was sharper then, and she was finally looking at me. “Is that how you see me? When you look at me,” she said, and now it was intense. This moment I’d stumbled into. “Is that all you see?”

“Wellbelove,” I say, meaning it. “You are so much more than someone else’s fantasy.”

That smile could launch a thousand ships.

“But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use your obvious charm to extort money from people who would objectify you. The joke,” I said, “is on them.”

“Thank you, Simon,” she’d said and there was a soft glow in her eyes that I recognized. And I knew, in that moment, that she would say yes if I were to ask.

I’d wanted to be selfish.

But I’d also wanted something else. The urge to be something more than obnoxious, to direct something softer than pranks and sharp words in Simon’s direction, to be...kind.

That, and I was afraid. Afraid of whatever feeling had prompted me to reach out a hand and lay it over top of his.

“Wellbelove, I would love to take you out on Saturday.

I know the way home now, without the assistance of one geriatric flip phone. It’s almost like someone fitted an orange lens atop the iris of the sky. I see the city through an auburn filter, the sun showing off as it bids the world farewell. The sky is a bonfire and I’m in awe.

London managing lovely in its last minutes alive.

I’m so taken with the view, I barely notice the tap tap tap of trainers on pavement. I don’t think about the fact that I’m cutting through the wilting park space between Green Door and the public housing that Davy calls home (but where Simon never will).

Twilight hums an indie lullaby in the sky when I feel something hard hit me from behind.

“What on—”

Another blow that knocks the wind from my chest.

_Something overwhelming is rolling around in my guts._

I stumble in a meaningless direction—not forward or back, just away from the place that the pain was coming from.

“What the fuck?” The words peek out in desperate gasps as I turn and see two people, a girl and a boy, both vaguely familiar in the way that people you see every day but never talk to usually are. They’re advancing on me, their bodies wrapped in the shadow.

“Why?” _Is this where the bruises came from?_

I’m suddenly very aware that I have no idea how to use my fists, or any part of me really, to try and stop someone from hurting me.

In my life, my body, my world, I’ve always been safe.

Their only answers are the empty echo of footsteps, clapping against the pavement, the loudest sound in the world.

He lunges, broad shoulders powering a fist with nasty potential. Somehow, I jump back, but there are fucking two of them, and she’s on me, one hand in my hair, the other crashing into my stomach.

Any air I had left leaves my body.

_It’s like a campfire at first. Hot, but not out of control._

“No,” I wheeze.

She hasn’t stopped hitting me and I can hear him breathing and I’m so fucking scared.

I look up at them through a watery mess of tears and pain.

_The heat swallows the hurt. It’s not a fire any longer. It’s more like the sun._

There’s something about their eyes and an empty sucking feeling, the itch of a dry throat in the morning, of gargling sand and spitting it into the sink. 

_They aren’t…themselves._

Something’s very wrong.

A fist catches me in the spine and my knees give out. The pavement is not gentle when it catches me.

I can’t breathe. _Winded_ , I think. I’m gasping and it hurts and what if I can’t get enough air and if I die here, on the ground in this body? Will Simon just get to keep me, keep on living my life, never knowing what happened to sarcastic twat from a town no one’s ever heard of? Will the gravity of this body pull me down with it?

_It wants to get out._

A shoe in my side.

_A part of me wants to let it._

I want to lash out. To harm. To leave a mark. I want them to hurt.

_I feel like all of the gravity in the world is being sucked into my chest and I’m going to take it all in, swallow the world down, and then spit it all back out in a rush of fire and fury and—_

_“Baz.”_

As something else collides with my body (his body), I hear it again.

_“Baz_ . _”_

A voice that I’d know anywhere. I voice that, if I could open my mouth, I could parrot back.

_“It’ll be okay.”_

I don’t see how. How he’s here with me when I know he’s a world away in my body, safe and sound and—

_“It will stop.”_

The pain has smoothed into a constant. An upended figure eight, dooming me eternally.

_“You have to hold on, Baz.”_

I savour the scrape of the pavement on my cheek. I’m not sure what else he wants me to hold on to.

_“You can’t go off.”_

Go where? Where can I go off to?

My chest is molten. Lava and electricity and light.

_“Please Baz. Don’t hurt them. Don’t go off.”_

Why have my legs betrayed me and why do they hate me so much?

_“Don’t let the magic win.”_

What on earth could he have done?

_“You’re stronger than them. Stronger than this.”_

But I’m not.

My eyes lose their focus. The orange fades from the world. My cells vaporize. And everything goes black.

…

I know that I woke up in a crater. Two bodies lay flat on their backs, one girl and one boy, stumbling to their feet. I remember their voices behind me as I made jelly just firm enough to stand tall. “Holy shit,” and “what happened,” and “are you okay, Simon?”

_Nothing about this is holy, and you happened, and no, I’m not._

_And I need to get away._

I know that every street light on my stumbling path home had exploded and the shards had scattered onto the pavement like snow.

I know that Davy had yelled, but captured none of the details.

Because I know that I needed this day to be over and that the only way to escape was to sleep and sleep and sleep.

…

Simon Snow washes in with the sea.

There is no time for posturing, no privacy allotted, no space to collect composure (the well’s dry on that anyways) (there’s no composure left to be had).

No pretences and—

“Baz, are you—”

I’m not okay.

I let my knees crash into the wet sand and savour the cool and the damp—so far removed from the heat that has cauterized each and every nerve ending without bias.

_It hurts, Snow. Why does it hurt?_

I don’t say it. I can’t.

Simon kneels, water seeping into the knees of his trackies, his chest bare in the morning light, his proximity the only thing that is right in a whole world of wrong.

“I-I don’t…” I don’t understand. I couldn’t control it. I don’t know what I’ve done.

Those calloused hands are gripping my shoulders, which is when I realize I’m shaking. A rattle in the lungs of the ocean. “I’ve got you, Baz.”

_Do you, Simon Snow? Are you going to pummel all of my puzzles pieces into a shape that makes sense?_

“Your magic,” I gasp. I can still feel each fist taking my lungs and squeezing. “It hurts. Why does it hurt?”

_Magic is supposed to be loveliness. Reminiscent of my mother. Something to believe in, whimsy and wonder. Spells and prophecies. Light and life._

_Not the lover of fire and pain. Not something borne out of violence. Not a fist down my throat, pulling it out by my tonsils._

He doesn’t answer me. He pulls me towards him and I go.

It’s only when I feel the hot tears against his chest that I realize I’m crying. One of his broad hands rubs gently against my back, concentric circles and soft pressure. The rest of him is swallowing the rest of me.

The waves whisper, urging me to hush and shh, while Simon whispers promises into my hair.

“It’ll be alright. You did good, Baz. You didn’t hurt anybody.”

_I didn’t._

“I’ve got you.”

My cheek nestles against his clavicle, my head under his chin. I’m surrounded by Simon. Simon, who seems to see the thousand cuts I’m keen to die by, and is seeking to cover every one of them up.

“Don’t go.”

I’m not sure if I say it to him or to the sea.

“I won’t.”

And, for a little while, I believe him and he doesn’t.

Two boys kneeling on the edge of the world. Where the sand meets the sea.


	10. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue teeth, the netherworld, a mosquito in a rainstorm, the day the stars came falling, redacted dreams, and the world's most aggressive side-hug.  
> Also, the magic of Billy Joel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Billy Joel's Piano Man may make an appearance in this chapter. And (may I be so presumptuous to suggest) the chapter may be improved if you have the song ready. I'm so keen, I'll even link it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVjTlTdIDQ&ab_channel=billyjoelVEVO) ;)
> 
> Happy reading!

**Simon, as Baz**

I don’t stumble around his room anymore. I’ve stopped getting lost (in this stupid sprawling mess of a house), I’ve stopped sleeping in and, as a result, I’ve stopped missing breakfast.

Fiona is in her study when I thunder down the stairs, drawn to the smell of bacon like a moth to sputtering grease.

“Just lather that salve on the affected area and it should help with the pain,” Fiona says in what must be the friendliest version of her voice—it still sounds like a dragon snarling, but I’ve started to recognize the difference.

White streak catching in the sunlight, I can see Fiona as she might have been. Young and made of fire, a woman on a warpath to nowhere in particular.

Baz had said she was different before Natasha died. That her cheeks hadn’t been so hollow. That she had taken bumps in the road at full speed to send kid-sized Baz bouncing into the ceiling of her jeep.

The sun dips a little, and Fiona tightens up a mason jar of thick clear liquid and passes it to Mr. Wentworth.

“Thank you, dear,” he says, pressing two crisp bills into her palm. “Your Lilac lotion is the only thing that helps.”

“Yes, yes Wally.” Fiona pats him on the back in her best effort at warmth.

“An entire medical industrial complex and we still have to wait on magic to save us,” he grumbles. “Thank god for you, Fiona.”

“Mmm,” Fiona hums, rolling her eyes at me over his shoulder. Fate was cruel to leave her in a position where she has to use any customer service skills—it is a bad fit.

“Thanks agai—”

“Goodbye Wally.”

The old man shuffles out through the front entrance. As soon as she hears the front door close behind him, she lets out a dramatic sigh. “He would not shut up.” She wrinkles her nose. “Oh my poor leg this. And arthritis that. And the pain is so bad blah blah blah.”

I grin at her. I can’t help it.

“What are you so happy about?” she asks, turning on me.

“Nothing,” I say, still smiling. “What did you give him, anyway?”

The sound of the telly hums a quiet soundtrack for this early morning exchange.

**_You’ve probably noticed your nights skies are a bit brighter the last few days. The comet HumDrum11 has a celestial orbit of 1200. It will make its closest approach to the earth this Sunday. For you stargazers out there, get those lawn chairs ready. It’s going to be a beautiful view._ **

“Essential oils and corn starch.”

“You’re a fiend.” I’m proud of that one. It sounds like something Baz would say.

“I’m making a living. Keeping the myth of Pitch magic alive. There’s a difference.”

“Of course you are.”

“That’s enough sass from you,” Fiona says, pulling a strip of bacon from my half open mouth. “When did you start eating like a bipedal piglet?”

I’m so devastated at the oily perfection that was stolen away from me, I can barely speak.

“Go throw on a jumper,” Fiona says. “The Catacombs are a bit chilly once you get down there.”

“The Catacombs?”

“Basil, I know you’ve got a lot going on.” I open my mouth to defend myself, to parry any accusations of body swaps and magic, but Fiona will not be interrupted. “What with the decision about university and your idiot father. But if you start forgetting the anniversary of your own mother’s death, I’m going to feed you to the merwolves.”

_Fuck._

“I didn’t forget!”

_And what the fuck are merewolves?_

Fiona waves me away. “Hurry up and get dressed. Mordelia!” she howls into the bowls of the house. “Hurry up. We’re going to pay our respects.”

“Do you still wanna drag the record player out!” she shouts back. “Cause my Bluetooth speaker would be way—”

“Shut your mouth! We are not listening to Billy Joel on a fucking iPhone. I will not have it!” Fiona throws a fork across the kitchen and it lands in the sink with a nasty clatter. "Blue teeth. Seriously. Never trust someone born after the year 2000 with music."

 _The Pitches are a weird family_ , I think, but smile as I sneak a literal handful of bacon strips off the plate behind Fiona’s retro rage.

…

Fiona drives her jeep like a race car; the hills of Sandside list left and right as she treats the road like a landing strip and takes the turns like a fighter jet.

Mordelia is giving me a look that is almost suspicious. “What’s wrong with you?” she shouts over the wind billowing in through the open windows.

“What!?” I shout back as Fiona literally cackles into the face of danger. _I think I’m going to be sick._

“You’re holding onto the seat like you’re gonna shit yourself!” Mordelia shouts back.

“Are we sure Fiona knows how to drive?”

Mordelia seems to consider this.

“Shut up, you insubordinate runts!” Fiona howls. She has a bouquet of white roses settled in her lap that are, miraculously, still in tact. “Just lean into it and enjoy the ride!”

I should be appreciating the view, savouring what it is like to sit in this…family. But I’m pretty sure Mordelia’s right and I might piss myself and maybe that’s the point.

The corner comes out of nowhere. It’s a literal manifestation of _off the beaten path_ , and I would’ve missed it without Fiona’s guidance. I’m almost certain that it hadn’t been there a moment before; that it appeared when called upon, by the memories of this family and their reverence therein.

“Watch your head,” Fiona says, and I recognize it for what it is. An inside joke. A single puzzle piece that Baz decided to give to me.

We hit the first bump and the top of my skull cracks against the roof. _You lanky fuck_. 

“Told you,” she says, and then winks. Even pushing fifty, Fiona manages to look cool.

I’m pummelled black and blue by the time we finally get there. “The Catacombs,” Fiona breathes, reverent.

It’s so green it hurts to look at it. There are the remnants of what must’ve been buildings and are now just the bones, sticking up into the sky and sinking into the moss.

The world moving on.

“It looks like there was a fight here,” I mumble, to myself, but Fiona has the ears of a supervillain.

“There was.” She’s looking at the sprawling green ahead of us too, and it is almost as if her eyes can see the world as it once was. Maybe there was a tower over there, a dormitory. A nursery where the magical children would play. All destroyed by some awful struggle. Or maybe it was righteous.

I wonder if the good guys won.

I wonder if there were dragons and numpties and chosen ones. I wonder if there was someone here who made a last stand and someone who opposed him, light and dark. Magic and history.

_There’s a whole story here, and I’m desperate to know it. To run my fingers over the words and read every line._

“It’s…” But I don’t know. I don’t have the words for what this place is. And why it's captured my heart in a bottle.

“I know,” Fiona says, thumping me on the shoulders with a little too much force. “I know.”

“Mordy, the turntable!”

“You think I’d forget that?” Mordelia sticks her tongue out as Fiona saunters into the green.

Fiona’s not listening. She’s leading us down through a pile of rubble that must’ve been a chapel. Only chapels have fucking tombs beneath them, right?

It’s colder down here, and the tunnels quickly turn into a winding maze of brick melting into the earth. Time starts to feel stringy and soft and I don’t know how long we wander in the dark.

“From here on after is the netherworld.” Fiona isn’t talking to anyone in particular. Her words give this crumbling tunnel a texture; her story helps the walls take shape. “Some of the older texts remember this place as a kind of purgatory. Grounds where the living and the dead could come together. Where ghosts could dance with their loved ones, where veil between the two worlds thins and falls away.”

“I wish that were true,” Mordelia says as we wander farther and farther into the deep. She’s got a cheap portable turntable under one arm and a stubborn look painted all over her face.

“It is if you want it to be,” Fiona says. “Your mother thought so. Was so sure, she convinced me.”

“Then why isn’t she here,” Mordelia whispers, soft as the sound of her feet on the stone.

“I’ll come back up here in the spring,” Fiona says. “Finish mapping the tunnels one day. It was something Natasha started before she went.”

Fiona’s stopped us and is pulling two candles from her leather jacket’s deep pockets. Fire bursts into life, licking the walls and casting shadows that are more than a little bit ominous, and I realize that we’re standing in front of a tomb. It’s all white marble, roses and flames carved into the stone. An angel bursts from the walls behind her, made out of stars and butterflies. Fiona sets the flowers at its feet, an offering to the dead. 

“Whiskey. No fancy stones or ice or fucking nonsense.” Fiona pops the cork from a bottle that’s definitely worth more than everything I own back in London. “Just like Nat would’ve done. Just like we did do, a thousand times and more.” She lifts the bottle, takes a deep drink, and passes it to me.

_I shouldn’t be here. This should be Baz’s day. If there was going to be any day that he got to keep his body, it should’ve been today._

Still, I will not disrespect his mum. With a shaking hand, I lift the bottle to my lips and take a long swig.

There’s fire in my belly, licking my throat, as I force the swallow down.

“Put on the record, Mordy.”

The needle scratches a little—I can see her hand shaking—and a harmonica wheezes into life.

“Piano man,” Fiona scoffs, but there’s something in her voice, the density of her words thick with grief. “Such an overplayed shit stain of a song.” She leans towards me and yanks the whiskey from between my fingers, taking another long draw. “But she loved it.”

I can feel the truth of that statement echoing around the tomb, the piano bouncing off the walls, the record spinning circles back in time. “Give Billy my regards Nat!” Fiona roars into the dank.

Billy Joel bellows out a stanza of melancholy in answer, and I feel something soft pressing against my side. Mordelia. Tears streaming down her face.

“I miss her,” she says, sniffling. “And I didn’t even know her at all.”

Another lump on my left pulls me into the world’s most aggressive side hug. “Doesn’t mean she didn’t love you, kiddo,” Fiona says through a sob as the piano starts to wind down.

“I wish I’d had more time,” Mordelia warbles, and I pull her closer, possessed by some strange feeling in my chest that won’t let me go. I’m going to hug this little monster until she’s cried all she needs to, even if she fills the fucking ocean.

“You and me both,” Fiona says. “She was one hell of a woman, your mum. The world won’t see the likes of her for a generation.”

It’s a shadow of their grief, a glimpse at what it’s like to lose someone, and my chest feels tight and my throat is dry. _What it must’ve been like to have something so lovely and then watch it die._

“Nat used to say that we could unwind history. Play it back. That every house had their own special magic, and that we could leap through time.”

_Leap through time._

“She was obsessed. Kinda like you used to be with your fire.” Fiona leans into my shoulder. “But she took it to a whole other level. I told her she was cracked when she started braiding those cords.”

“What cords?”

Fiona scoffs and it echoes around the tomb. “Have you gone daft? You’re using one to keep that mop of hair tied up.”

My fingers reach up and trace gentle lines along the red band.

_This was Baz’s mums? Must be why he wears it all the time. I've got one just like it, sitting in my bedside table back home. How have I not noticed? How did I..._

“The cords represent the flow of time,” Fionna says, chasing the past, her eyes slightly out of focus. “Nat was adamant. Said that they twisted and tangled. Unravelled and connected. Said that’s what time is.”

Each word in this tiny memory feels like I have a hundred stones in my pockets as I try to wade through this life. I’m drowning in her details. This woman of seismic importance. Who believed in a magic guided by reason and logic, a magic that could weave a story, that could tell the tale of time. 

It’s so different from the reality I live, it almost hurts. _I’d love to see magic work that way. I’d give it all up to see it do one good thing._

“I told her she was dead wrong.” Fiona’s grin is fierce through her tears. “That Pitches were made of fire and that she was just letting her love of Doctor Who affect her judgement.” I feel an affectionate elbow crack me in the ribs. “But...”

I elbow her back. With love.

“But I wish she’d been right. So that we could go back. And make things different somehow. Cause the world would be a better place with her in it.”

We let the record play itself out and when Mordelia moves to collect it, Fiona stops her. “Leave it. She might need the company.”

Maybe there is magic in this place. The moment almost demands a waltz and, for a moment, I think I see two people moving through this space. I pretend that one is made of leather with very few fucks to give and the other all height and dignity, holding onto each other as they 1-2-3-4-ed through the bowels of the underworld.

**Baz, as Simon**

It’s difficult not to think of her every day; it’s impossible not to think of her today. Even in the body of a golden boy, even in a city that never sleeps.

She died a week before the summer festival—the biggest event in Sandside for the year and annual reminder that the Pitches were magic. I remember trying to leave the house that night, the week after she died. I thought I could stare at the glowing booths and fire dancers and the drums and the fireflies and that my grief wouldn’t be able to touch me. I’d been wrong.

The memory of my mother feels like butterfly wings that I’ve stitched back on.

I didn’t realize how fickle memory could be until it was too late. My mother was a mountain in my life and yet there are only a dozen memories that I can recall with the clarity they deserve. The rest have scattered on the wings of vagaries and intangible feelings. Moments where I know she was there and I know that it meant something, but where the details always slip through my grasp.

The dozen memories that come in clear I cherish with a possessiveness that surprises even me and manifests as a selfish reluctance to share. If I offer them up to another person, they could become diluted, somehow. Or worse, someone could take the story and make it their own. They could add their own details and when it comes back to me again, I may not recognize it.

Today, though, I’m alone and I want to be with her, and so I let them fly around me, broken and honest and true.

…

_“What story would you like to read tonight?”_

_The blankets had been crisp, with knights and dragons prancing across the sheets._

_“You sing to Mordy.”_

_Mordelia was just a baby then, and my jealousy flared like the fire in my blood with more intensity than any six-year-old should’ve been able to muster._

_I remember the way her lips would curl, the tiny divots that weren’t quite dimples at the edge of her smile. Her face is so long in my memories, and it felt like she was looking down a mountain at me._

_“Does that mean that you want me to sing to you?”_

_I knew that I was too old to have my mother singing me to sleep, but I still answered, “Yeah.”_

_My feelings were jumbled and anxious and excited and jealous, tumble drying around inside of me. She lifted up the corner of my blanket and scooted under the covers._

_My mother always ran a bit hot—Fiona said it was the fire in her blood, but I think that’s unlikely given my frigid circulatory system. As I nuzzled up into her side, I remember feeling the warmth of her on my cheek._

_I remember the way her long fingers had traced gentle lines through my hair—with the tenderness of a comma and the certainty of a full stop._

_I remember the way her voice sounded as she sang: rich like hot cocoa and sweet like the marshmallows she would plop on top._

_And I remember the song. It was classic and simple and it still makes my throat contract when I hear it in passing. Twinkle twinkle little star._

_I let the memory of her warmth and her hands and her voice carry me into sleep._

…

I haven’t seen him since he held me. Since he wrapped those lovely arms around me and refused to let me go. Since I cried myself out, leaving his chest wet with whatever his magic had done to me.

I don’t know how to talk to him. Not after something that soft. I’m afraid to break it.

Thankfully, Snow’s words come tumbling out before I have time to try and find my own.

“Your mum. I’m so sorry. It shouldn’t’ve been me.”

“It’s alright,” I say, even as the open wound sucks the happiness out of the salty air. A part of me is glad he was there. Someone so alive in a place so very not. It soothes the ache a little. An aspirin in the face of a thousand arrows, but still. It was going to hurt either way.

“I think I love your aunt,” he says, rubbing one hand through his hair. _Crowley, those curls._

“She’s a mess who thinks she’s far cooler than she actually is,” I say, but, in that secret part of me he doesn’t get to see, I feel fond.

“Yeah, and she drives like a fucking maniac,” Simon says, and I can see residual fear shining through his simple blue eyes.

That startles a laugh out of me. “That she does.”

“Hey Baz—” he starts to say, but I don’t think I can keep it in anymore.

“You are made of magic. Real magic.”

Simon closes his mouth and nods. He looks so sad, standing in front of me. Close enough that I can see muscles shaping expressions, can count the freckles on his neck, but far enough that I can’t quite reach him. _I want to reach him._

“And,” I push on. If Snow can bluster, then so can I. “I can feel it. I can...sometimes I can make fire with my hands. It’s so small. Not what you've got. But it's inside of me. It’s vibrating in my pores. It’s fire and explosions and violence.”

Simon looks so sad, even as his hair glimmers like the world after it rains.

“C’mere.”

His chin is jutted out and his features rearrange into something determined. Something bold. A fighting stance.

“Snow—”

“Just…c’mere.”

I do.

“Gimme your hand.”

“But why—”

“If you're gonna fight me the whole way, we’re gonna run out of time.”

“Pushy mongrel.” But I let my fingers slip between his. Of course I do.

“I don’t know if this’ll work.” He blushes and I want to lick him (I’m disturbed. Ask anyone). “But I just…I want to try and make magic that isn’t…ugly. That doesn’t break everything it touches.”

“What are you doing?” I ask, but without much bite. Because his hand in mine feels like home and I’m desperate to keep him. _Please let me keep him._

“I want to try and…” Fuck, that blush looks delicious. It takes all of my self-control not to close the distance. “Share my magic with you?”

“Oh?”

“If you have it and I have it, maybe I could…give you some? Do you want that?”

_Do I want magic?_

How has Snow managed to articulate the defining question of my life in so few words?

“I don’t…know. I guess we could try?”

“I’ve never done this before,” Snow says, and his grip on my fingers tightens. “If I hurt you—”

“You won’t hurt me.”

“You’re sure?”

 _More than you know, Snow_. “I’m sure.”

Simon nods, closes his eyes, and pulls me a little bit closer.

“I’m just gonna…push, okay?”

Now I’m blushing and I have never been more grateful for closed eyes. “Okay.” I don’t know why I’m whispering.

“It might not work, so just—”

But then I feel it. A live wire, a storm cloud churning its friction just for me, all of that energy swimming in through my fingers—intertwined with a shooting star.

“Are you—”

“I can—”

“It’s working?”

“Yeah.” _I feel like I could float away. Like I could light a forest on fire. Like I could call down the stars and…_

“Snow?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to try to...” I feel almost silly suggesting it, but I can barely breathe with the power that’s flowing inside me. It makes me brave. Confidence is a false god, at whose mantle I tithe excessively. “Do you want to try to cast something?”

“I…I don’t know…I don’t know how?”

“Me neither,” I say, almost giddy. This feels different than the lava giant living in Snow’s chest. This feels…properly magical.

He reaches around and grabs my other hand. It’s as if we connect the circuit. It’s as if every lightbulb in the world is humming in my veins. It’s…everything.

It's hard to remember who you are when you are swept up in the ocean that is Simon Snow. I feel like a pinprick in the Atlantic, a mosquito in a rainstorm. 

“Try.” He says. “Try now.”

And I do.

“ **_Twinkle twinkle little star_ **.” It’s stupid. Childish. The first thing to come to mind. But it’s the day my mother died and it’s her and I’m not sorry.

And that’s when we soar.

The world around us disappears—ocean waves retreat and trains seep back into the station.

There are stars. Stars that feel close enough to touch.

“Merlin and Morgana,” I breathe, clinging to Simon’s hands like they are the only thing keeping me from spiralling off into space. _Maybe they are._

“Are we…are we in space?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was that a spell?”

“I don’t know.”

I can breathe, I can move. Gravity is defined by wherever Simon Snow is, holding onto me, a hot ball of magic, and I’m crashing into him.

“Are you holding back at all?”

“Not on purpose.”

“It’s like we completed a circuit,” I say.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” Not now, Simon. Not ever. “I want to look at the stars.”

And so we do.

The stars are falling all around us. I’ll remember this always. The day the stars came falling.

I think I want to kiss him.

Just this once. I want to kiss him just to see. I’ve never been kissed before. I've never wanted to kiss anyone but him.

I think I’m going to.

I lean in.

I’m going to kiss him.

Somewhere in a galaxy—maybe far far away. Who knows—the strange moments of overlap we are granted comes to an end.

“I’m…I’m slipping. I think we’re out of time.” There’s something in his eyes.

“Are you pulling back?” I ask, as he starts to fade.

“No,” he says, and his hands tighten around mine. “I think I’m going home.”

…

I’m almost sad to see the ceiling of my bedroom—repainted a crisp eggshell after Snow’s sharpie attack and graffiti hijinks.

_I was going to kiss him._

I want to pretend that it was the moment (the atmosphere doesn’t get much more romantic) (even if there was little technical atmosphere to speak of). It would be much more convenient to redact this particular dream. But I can’t. I won’t.

Simon Snow blusters like no one else. He rages and froths like the ocean that haunts the strange dreamscape where our worlds overlap, if only for a few minutes the mornings we switch.

I savour his strong arms and dancing freckles pulling me into his chest.

I imagine the way his breathing would move, a rhythm rocking me to sleep.

I picture a pair of peacock boxers and laugh.

I can’t stop thinking about the way his magic rippled around us. A current. A circuit. Complete.

He is stubborn and charges into my life with the love and care of a tyrant.

His bathroom is an affront against human decency.

He is an unmitigated disaster.

He’s impossible.

He is the most powerful mage in this entire fucking world, and nothing can hurt him. Not even me. 

He is made of magic. 

And I’m hopelessly in love with him.


	11. You Should Be Able to See the Comet in the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A date, a phone call, and a thought that becomes a need that becomes a plan.

**Simon, as himself**

_ Long hair, hanging loose, touching the top of his neck. I want to touch him there. The stars are falling around us but none of that matters because I can’t look away from those grey eyes…  _

_ Fuck.  _ My alarm clock is an angry goose and it’s pulling me out of a moment I am definitely not ready to leave.

“Ugh!” The groan that crawls out is almost feral. I flop onto my stomach and force my face into the pillow.

I want to punch something. I want to dive back into sleep. I think…I think…

Well, I think Baz was going to kiss me. He looked like he wanted to.

_ I want him.  _ I try to decide if this is new information and realize quickly that, no, it’s probably not. I’ve thought about Baz; I can’t stop thinking about Baz. 

_ I showed him the stars. Or did he show me? _

I’m shifting positions in my bed that’s too short atop my sheets that are too old when I feel it: a burning sensation in my chest; it’s inside of my throat, it’s in my stomach, it’s in the muscle lining my heart. It all feels hot. Like…I swallowed cough syrup that was on fire. It’s magic, but somehow, I know that it’s not mine. Mine’s a thousand pounds of dynamite. This… _ this _ is not  _ that _ .

It’s soft and thrumming, like the heat of a candle burning inside my ribcage. It feels like sharp words and sharper wit. It feels like a ruthless stare and sprawling vocabulary.

It feels like magic. (But not mine.)

It feels like Baz.

_Fuck._ _I need to find him._ It’s a thought that becomes a need that becomes a plan in record time.

I don’t want our first… (I picture his mouth, inches from mine)  _ anything _ to be in a fucking dream. I want him. In front of me. Somewhere I can follow. Somewhere without a time limit and magical interruptions.

_ Enough _ . I need to find him.

I have his mobile. (I remember feeling like a bit of a stalker for lifting it) (I have no regrets). It’s just sitting in my contacts.

I could call.

I could do it now, just pick up the phone and dial.

I could ask if Basilton Pitch was there and he could whinge about how much he hated that name and could I please stop and then maybe, we could just talk for a while.

I’m going to. Right now.

I pick up my phone, take a deep breath, pray for confidence, and flip it open—

—to an alarm titled in all caps  _ DATE. _

“Date?” I say to the empty air. 

I open the notification, eyes bleary with sleep and disappointment, and read the details.

_ I may have taken pity on your unrequited crush on the waitress at Green Door. She has agreed to go on a date with you this Sunday. If you and I do not switch that day, then it will be up to you to continue the inroads I have initiated. I know you are likely thinking something along the lines of “that posh twat thinks he can romance my girl better than I can”— _

—he’s quite right. I am thinking that. More or less—

_ but I am quite charming when I want to be, Snow. I have included instructions below for where you’re taking her and what you will be doing—which begins outside the Sky Gardens at 11am. I have also taken the liberty to provide several links useful to the amateur romantic you appear to be. _

_ Please know that, while this message may appear a bit…how would you say it? Dickish? That my intentions in this venture are pure. You appear fond of her and so here is the perfect first date. I genuinely hope that you find success, with Agatha, and maybe some happiness. Because your corner of the world is rather short on that sort of thing, and you deserve it. _

I swallow a lump in my throat.

I’d thought…he was going to kiss me? I’d hoped…

I don’t know what I’d hoped. Everything feels rather stark—my mouth is pasty and my eyes are shrouded in gooey leftovers. The world is harsh after a dream—the edges casting my lot in harsh relief.

The phone starts belching another horrid sound out through its ancient speakers. “Fuck, what now!” I look down at the screen and see, once again in all caps,  _ YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF BED YOU LAZY TROLL! YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR MY PERFECT DATE.  _ _I’ve hung the only acceptable outfit for the occasion that you own in the closet. Please note that, when hung, clothes tend not to wrinkle. A lesson for future endeavours._

You’d think those words would have some bite to them, but I see them (and Baz) for what they are: a reminder that he knows me well enough to understand the importance of a second alarm.

“Right,” I say to no one. “I guess I need to get dressed.”

…

I’m almost convinced it’s a prank, this whole thing. An elaborate one, to be sure, but I wouldn’t have put it past Baz a few weeks ago, back when he was shaving my legs and tattooing my arse.

I don’t know when things changed. Maybe when I held him after he went off, as I huddled in the surf and wondered what it would’ve been like. 

To have someone hold me. 

And so I tried to be the person that I wished I’d had when I was eleven and I’d set the world on fire for the first time. And I think he leaned in, just a bit. Let me care about him in that tiny moment when all his walls had washed away.

That Baz wouldn’t put me up to this. He wouldn’t leave me waiting for a date who would never come.

And that’s why, when Agatha walks up behind me and taps me on the shoulder—an angel walking among us, a sunbeam made flesh—I’m not surprised.

“Simon,” she says, tossing a swath of white gold over her shoulder and smiling at me. Her smile is happily ever after.

“Uh,” I grunt. Sometimes, it’s hard to look at Agatha. “You look…lovely. So so lovely.”

There’s a shift in her eyes, something curious and a bit…disappointed.  _ Fuck _ .

I feel like I swallowed fire ants. I’ve somehow managed to muck it up already and it’s barely begun.

“Shall we get going?” she asks, looking at the giant glass building behind me.

“Sure!” I try to up my enthusiasm. Baz planned this date. I looked at the itinerary on the way over on the tube. It’s bloody perfect.

“Honestly, Simon, you’re filled with surprises,” Agatha says, her neat looking purse swaying in time with her steps. “The Sky Garden is such a wonderful idea. It’s touristy enough that I’ve never been, but lovely too.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, looking through her, up at the glass walls lurching up into the sky.

“The pamphlets online say that you get the loveliest views of London. A bird’s eye view.”

_ I wonder if Baz had been listening when I tried to explain why I’d wanted to fly above this place. When I told him that the closer I was to the pavement, the shittier things seemed “I wish…I wish I could have a bird’s eye view. So I…pretend I do. On paper at least.” _

Thoughtful fuck.

“Simon, are you listening?” Agatha says, and I realize that, no, I’m not. My thoughts are an undetermined number of kilometers away.

…

I have too many limbs. That’s obviously the issue. The reason this afternoon is going so…well, the only word for it is badly.

The Sky Garden was pretty enough. Agatha rubbed her thumb over the thick leaves of the Bird of Paradise and combed her fingers through the French Lavender.

“So,” I said, once the waiter seated us. “Gillespies designed this place.”

“Gillespies?”

“It’s a practice that does a lot of landscape design and planning. Their work is—”

“I don’t really know much about that kind of thing,” Agatha mumbles through a bite her lobster ravioli.

“Oh. Of course.” I cast my mind around for something else to talk about. “So, uh.” Fuck. “Horses?”

I hadn’t known that Agatha could scowl.

The art gallery is worse, somehow. The Tate Modern is showing an exhibit called Nostalgia. I am a bit tickled I knew the meaning of that word—I’ve been brushing up on my vocab since Penny starting getting suspicious.

The whole place is so…quiet. I try to keep my volume to a minimal. Vaulted ceilings are engaged in an interminable stretch for the heavens. “S’lovely woodwork, innit?”

Agatha’s smile is wan and a bit washed out. I settle back into silence.

I wonder if this is the kind of date Baz would want to be taken on. To climb up into the sky and see all of London and then to return back to the ground and walk through the past.

I wonder where he is.

_ How he’s doing. _

_ If he was leaning in. _

_ If he’d wanted to kiss me. _

“Simon watch—”

But it’s too late. There’s a barrier post, strung with a velvet red rope and a sign that says, “Please do not touch the artwork.” I don’t see it. Of course I don’t. 

I tumble, all limbs (too many fucking limbs), some part of me catching in the rope, another coming down hard, the sound of metal clanging against hard tile deafening in the quiet room. The vaulted ceilings are laughing at me, catching the sound and sending the echo back, a sarcastic rebuttal to my clumsiness.

“Fuck.” I mean for the word to be under my breath, but there really is no such thing in a silent room with the world’s best acoustics. And so my profanity is also projected for everyone to hear.

Agatha’s cheeks go a charming shade of red, but not in the way I’d have liked.

…

I lean against one of the rails and let my eyes trail over the Thames.

_ You will have a lovely view of London Bridge on your walk to the restaurant. Should your animal magnetism fail you, Snow, the scenery should make up for it entirely. _

“Do you want to get dinner?” Asking seems the polite thing, even if I know the answer before I ask the question.

Agatha pulls up next to me, resting her arms on the ledge. “I think this is enough for today.”

I nod, breathing in the twilight.

“Simon, can I ask you something?” Her voice is soft—not upset or encouraging. Just a sound that blends into the traffic humming behind us.

“Um, yeah. Of course.”

“Why did you ask me here today?”

_ Oh god. What if she’s onto me? I thought Penny might suspect, but I’d never really dreamed Agatha would notice. She hardly seemed to notice me at all before. _

“Cause…well, you’re…”

“I’m?” She waits for me to finish.

“You’re perfect.”

That soft smile is a sledgehammer. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. I hoped…”

The silence would hurt if it weren’t for the waves.  _ Waves. That’s what tells me he’s coming. That Baz will be here soon. _

“I hoped you saw me more clearly. You seemed to, the other day.”

“I did!” It comes out in a gasp. “I do!”

Her hair is a curtain, dividing the two of us as we both stare out at the bridge, made famous by this urban jungle.

“I could be wrong, and I’m sorry if I am, but you had a bit of a crush on me, didn’t you?” she says, direct but not unkind.

“I…” I don’t know how to answer that question.

“But right now,” Agatha says, and I think I hear her sigh. “Now, you’re interested in someone else?”

“No! I mean…it’s not that.”

“Really?”

“There’s no one. It’s not like that.”

“Are you sure about that?” She turns her head and the curtain lifts. “Maybe you should look more closely. You might be missing something.”

“I—”

“Thank you for today.” Four words, all finality. “I’ll see you at work.”

Her heels tap against the pavement as she leaves. A dream of a girl that I’d thought I wanted. I saw Agatha in two dimensions. In what she could be for me.

I let my eyes drift in and out of focus. Even now, at the end of a date that couldn’t have gone much worse, Baz still manages to be right; the scenery does make up for it. Entirely.

I look down at the last sentence of his message.

_ By the time the date’s over, you should be able to see the comet in the sky. _

“What does he mean?” I whisper to the waves, on the off chance that he hears me.

_ Strange _ , I think. There are no comets when I look up. There haven’t been for years. Just inky blacks and blues spilling across the night.

**Baz, as himself**

Mirrors have been a strange experience these past few weeks. It’s as if I’m seeing someone else in my reflection.

I slip my mother’s red cord out of my pocket and pull my hair into a messy bun.

It’s my face, looking back at me—I know it is. But sometimes, I feel like the dark waves should be golden curls, the sharp bone structure should smooth into a stubborn chin.

My reflection is crying—the tears running down my cheeks almost surprise me. I don’t know why they’re there, pooling at the corners of my eyes and spilling some wandering confession onto my skin. I want to reach through the mirror and grab him by the shoulders, shake into him the grace of good sense.

Mirrors, however, are inconveniently solid and not generally open to corporeal intrusions. And so I’m forced to face the feelings leaking from these watery eyes.

_ I wanted to go on this date. (With you, Snow) (only with you). _

More tears, the quiet kind that slip rather than bluster. That sneak up on you and then sneak out of you. The kind of tears that go quietly into the night without a fight.

_ They’ve probably met up by now. _

It was a date destined to go well by design. Add one chosen one, three ideal locations, Simon’s yearning, and the plans of a meticulous pining idiot (me. That’s me) and what emerges must be something wonderful.

_ I wonder if he’ll find the courage to kiss her. He’s braver than me. I’ve known that for a long while. _

It seems especially cruel that we are forced into a situation that grants us access to the most intimate details of another person without the ability to actually be with them. To know them, to see them, to love them…

…and to watch it all slip away. The details have the structural integrity of a message written in the sand. And I’ve always known that the waves are coming in.

**Simon, as himself**

I know I should feel something. Disappointment? Dejection maybe? Some strange sense of loss?

I’m going to have to apologize to Baz. I turned his perfect day into a giant mess of…me.

I don’t, though. I don’t feel any of that.

No. Instead, I’m feeling something urgent. Something deep in my gut, working its way up to a lump in my throat and a pressure in my chest that just wants to get out.

I don’t want a perfect day with Agatha or a perfect view of the city. I mean, I  _ did _ . It would’ve been nice to have both. But what I really want feels like a world away.

Or a phone call. 

I want to talk to Baz.

I flip open my phone and click through my contacts until I find it.

_ Posh Stranger _ —it had seemed the most appropriate label at the time. 

He’d kill me if he knew. There are worse things to call someone and I didn’t want him to find it. Didn’t want him to know that I needed a safety net. A line connecting me to him, just in case the swapping stopped. I didn’t want to risk losing him forever. Dream memory has spotty reception and it just…seemed like the right thing to do.

Right now, though, it feels creepy. Stalkerish? Intrusive without permission?

_ Fuck _ . 

The pressure in my chest is greater than the panic in my throat.

I press down on the little green call button and lift the phone to my ear, trying to keep my skin from cartwheeling away.

**Baz, as himself**

My phone is making a horrifying noise—an incoming call. The prospect of human communication with words rather than text messages feels like a task too large for how I’m feeling today.

With limbs made of lead, I pick up my phone and press it to my ear.

“Baz, are you still at home?”

My cousin’s rumbling voice is demanding, even through radio waves.

“Oh, it’s you Dev.” I’m not sure who I was expecting, am not sure why I’m disappointed. 

“What the fuck happened to you?” The words are concern tinged with disgust. Or perhaps disgust tinged with concern—you can never really tell with Dev. “You sound like someone ran over your dog or something.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“Thank you for that charming commentary on my life. Might I suggest you consider the golden rule of polite conversation?”

“You’re talking but all I hear is you being a douche—”

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, best to not say anything at all.”

“Fuck off.” Sometimes I wonder if he registers anything I say, or it just floats around his suspiciously circular head like space debris. “This is the third day of class you’ve missed in a month.”

“It’s our last month of school,” I say. “Half of the graduating class has stopped attending, and with much more devotion to truancy than—”

“Baz. It’s you. Or well…” Dev seems to be struggling for words. “It really isn’t you. It’s not like you at all. That, and you’ve been so fucking weird lately. Funny. Fun.”

“Really,” I say, irritation jolting me out of my funk. “Funny and fun? You think that is out of the ordinary?”

“Yes!” he shouts into the phone and I jerk away from the speaker to save my eardrums from his abuse.

“Look, Dev, I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine. Truly. I just didn’t feel like going, that’s all.”

He grunts, clearly not convinced, but lets the subject drop. “Look,” he said. “It’s the Summer festival tonight. You’re still coming, right?”

“Fiona would peel me with a paring knife if I didn’t,” I say, meaning it. The Summer solstice is one of the most magical days of the year. Fiona’s been preparing astral projections, bottling tonics. Her collection of knock off items to ply into the hands of the uncritical is espansive.

If you don’t look too closely, chicken bones can be dragons knuckles and spring water the tears of a fairy. “ _ You just have to believe it _ ,” Fiona would say.

“Me and Niall are gonna meet up with a six pack and some of his gran’s cinnamon buns and try and find a place with a good view of the comet.”

“Oh yeah the comet. It’ll be at its brightest today, right?” That sounds almost wholesome. And tempting. Sans the hopsy piss liquid.

“Yeah. Niall’s a bit obsessed with this space stuff. You should come.”

“I will not drink your overpriced bread water,” I say, but my resolve to hide under my covers for the rest of eternity is fading a little.

“There he is,” Dev says. “You bring a bottle of whatever fancy shit you drink and meet us at the festival grounds.”

“Okay,” I say, resigned, beaten down by Dev and his bloody polite concern. “I’ll be there in an hour. Just gotta—”

“Make yourself look picture perfect. Yes, Baz, I know.” He’s hung up before my rebuttal is even half baked.

…

Stalls are lined up like dominoes on the main hill, lit up by the glow of lanterns and summer.

The first breath after a coma. I’m standing next to an open fire, watching the lights dancing off the lake, listening to the waves pulling at the sand, dragging the city into the sea, little by little, with love and care.

“Lads,” I say, as they both stumble towards me up the lane, arms around each other, already halfway buzzed.

I lift my bottle of wine in welcome and we wander off, the three of us, into the festivities.

All the while, I can’t help but stare up into the sky. My mouth has lost its elasticity—falling open and just staying that way, as if I could swallow this view and keep it in my chest.

_ I wonder if Simon swallowed a falling star. I wonder if some celestial supernova got bored with seeing the world from top down and decided to give up their cosmic powers and live inside a boy. To see the world through his simple blue eyes, within his perfect tawny skin. _

The billing of celestial event of the century had seemed a bit overstated—I’ve been listening to every public figure speak of nothing but this comet for almost a month, and so hadn’t thought it would rise to the occasion.

I was so catastrophically wrong.

It’s a celestial zipper across the sky, slowly opening up and giving this world a glimpse at something our eyes were never meant to see.

The colours are so bright, they would offend the modesty of the night sky if the sky weren’t already properly dazzled—just like the rest of us.

White burning bright, turquoise, purple, and blue, the aurora borealis made a watercolour painting, but a thousand times brighter and with the intentionality that makes my heart ache.

It is the hand of something bigger, drawing lines of colour and madness all across the horizon

It is star stuff closing in.

It’s a part of the universe that has no business being this close.

It’s magic. Unquestionably.

The wind tosses my hair around my face and I reached up to try and touch it. As if it is possible to shake hands with god.

**Simon, as himself**

“The customer that you have dialled is outside of the cellular network.” The voice is sterile and pre-recorded.

Weird. I’m certain that this was the number. I repeated it over and over. I wrote it on my hand until I was sure that I'd poison Baz’s body with whatever toxic elements were in the ink. I know that I got this right.

So why isn’t it working?

My body deflates.

_ By the time the date’s over, you should be able to see the comet in the sky. _

It is the only part of this date that Baz did not deliver; the sky is smooth as an ocean of black ice.

“I’ll tell him about the disastrous date the next time we switch,” I mutter, pocketing my phone and starting the long walk home.

But, for some reason, after that, Baz and I never switched places again.


	12. What Was His Name?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Online boyfriends, a bus replacement service, suspicious meat impersonators, and mess of bodies with everywhere to go and no time to waste

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to ninemagics, who described the perils of a bus replacement services in details that were both lovely and enraged. ♥️

**Simon**

**Penny (7:16 am): hey, you okay? you seemed really weird yesterday.**

**Penny (10:18 am): how are things? You were weird in first lesson.**

**Penny (10:21 am): I keep calling you weird. Sorry about that.**

**Penny (2:45 pm): the date went that bad huh**

**Penny (3:17 pm): there’ll be someone else, you know.**

**Penny (3:31 pm): why'd you disappear so fast. where did you go???**

**Penny (4:13 pm): you don’t have to sulk like this**

**Penny (5:19 pm): kay, srlsly what’s going on???**

**Penny (6:01 pm): I’m starting to think my alien theory really has some traction**

_Simon (6:44 pm): sry been really distracted lately its not you_

**Penny (6:44 pm): this is the pitchy explanation I get! this is unacceptable Simon.**

**Incoming call: Penelope Bunce: (7:02 pm): Call declined.**

New Voicemail (7:02 pm)

**Penny (7:03 pm): are you fucking serious?**

**Penny (7:05 pm): Simon Snow, if you don’t answer me, so help me, I will come to your goddamn house**

**Penny (7:14 pm): okay**

**Penny (7:14 pm): you made me do this**

**Penny (7:15pm): I wash my hands of all responsibilities**

**Penny (7:32 pm): I’m being serious, Simon. I’m actually on my way.**

**Penny (7:32 pm): Photo received.**

**Penny (7:40 pm): If I find you with a space antenna up your arse or six extra legs, I’ll never forgive you.**

**Penny (8:01 pm): I’m outside your building. Are you seriously not going to let me in?**

**Penny (8:05 pm): Jokes on you, a nice woman in a trench coat held the door open.**

I hear the knocker pounding over and over and over. It’s a sound I barely recognize; I’m not sure that we’ve ever had guests. Still, whoever is out there is thundering.

“Simon!” Davy is wheezing from the sofa. “Get the door!”

_Who in their right mind would visit us at this hour?_

The guest (or maniac) has switched from knocking to what must be a closed fist, and is punching away at the entrance.

“Simon! Hurry up and send whoever the fuck that is on their way!”

“Right!” I holler back, stuffing my pencil behind my ear and looking up from what feels like the hundredth drawing I’ve sketched this week.

_I’m losing my dreams._

I realized it pretty much right away. I tried to think about him and it got harder every time. Like a photograph that I was smudging with my fingers, every greasy fingerprint taking a piece of the memory away with it.

Names went first. Before I could even think to write them down. 

_I forgot his name._

That’s when I started to draw, in earnest.

Because faces were going too. And there was no way I was going to lose that face.

There are at least a dozen pieces of paper hanging from my walls featuring an aristocratic brow, hair just long enough to touch the tops of his shoulders. In some, I’ve got it tucked behind an ear, in others up in a messy bun, held together by a red cord (that looks a lot like the one I wear sometime, tight and worn around my wrist), in others it's loose around his face, gentle across his cheekbones.

Grey eyes storm out of the pages. _I’m never going to lose that face._

Other faces are scattered across the floor. A boy with red hair and another one, who looks at the redhead with something like love. A woman with a streak of white in her hair. A young girl, maybe a sister? Portraits of a dream that I’m certain was real.

As I was trying to wrap my charcoaled fingertips around _him_ ( _what was his name_?), I started to lose the places too. All of the places that I’d been.

An underground graveyard, a hill with a gentle cliff tumbling into the ocean, sand and sand and more sand, a town being digested by the sea.

Classrooms and bus stops and a parking lot made of washboard. All immortalized on my walls.

Little details that don’t feel like they add up to anything.

_Why can’t I remember his name?_

“SIMON, I’M NOT GOING TO ASK AGAIN.”

Fuck. Ever since we stopped switching and I realized I was…losing him…I haven’t been able to think about much else. It just didn’t seem important compared to what was leaving me behind. Still, if I let Davy sit like this for too long, things might take a turn for the throwing and the breaking and the food disappearing.

_It’s really not worth the trouble._

I sigh, trying to look away from the drawing in front of me—a strip of road illuminated by headlights, drifting through a motorway night—and wander out of my room.

Davy sees me as I wander down the hall in my socks. “Turn them away, Simon. And make sure they know the impropriety of calling this late at night.”

I wonder if he googled impropriety or if one of his talking news heads dumped the word into his brain. I don’t have the energy to speak, though, so I shrug and pull open the door.

And a full-sized real-life Penny tumbles in.

Literally. She had her hand up to bang and the momentum carried her onto the shaggy welcome mat.

“Oh.” It’s a default word and it squeaks between my surprise and my vocal cords.

Penny picks herself up with the swiftness of someone who tumbles regularly. “Oh?!” She’s speaking very loudly.

“Pen, can you—”

“That’s all I get? OH!”

“Really, Davy is—”

“I have been texting you all night! I’ve been worried sick! You could’ve been kidnapped! Held for ransom. You could…” Her frustration falters for a split second. “You could be doing something without me!”

Oh, indeed.

“Why did you bring the noise in, Simon, when I explicitly told you to leave it outside.”

I take a step back towards the living room to face Davy’s displeasure, but Penny is quicker.

“Because,” she says, pulling herself up to her prodigious height of 5’3”, “I am his friend and I am here to visit him.”

It’s assertive, it’s simple, and it appears to be true. Penny is already unlacing her shoes. Davy’s face purples and his moustache quivers in a way that lets me know I will pay for this later. For now, though, there’s nothing to do but remove her from the situation and avoid any additional damage.

Davy belches after us, but we’re already in my room by the time he’s thought of something to say.

The sound of my bedroom door closing is the sound of safety.

Penny tosses her huge purse on the floor and pops up on my bed. “So that’s the infamous Davy,” she says. “He’s a real charmer.”

“Penny,” I say, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of my words. “Um…what are you doing here?”

Her pointy glasses make her look that much more withering. “Did you not read my texts?”

Oh. Fucking oh. “I…I’ve been a bit distracted.”

“No shit!”

I really don’t like when she’s upset. Penny’s properly scary, like a pack of bloodthirsty Corgis.

“Allow me to recap,” she says, leaning back into the pile of unmade bedding. “You weren’t answering and so I threatened to come over. And then you still didn’t answer. And I couldn’t have you thinking I make empty threats.” She looks at me quite seriously. 

“Right. Um…I’m a little busy at the mom—”

“Oh no you don’t!” Penny’s threat level has been elevated from dangerous to apocalyptic. “You have been dodgy all week. Simon, we have a no secrets pact.”

She’s right. We do. Established after I found out she’d broken up with the online arsehole…Micah? And I had to try to make her feel better about ending things with a guy I hadn’t even known existed.

And here I was, doing the same thing. With a little magic and some body shenanigans, but still.

_Fuck. I fucked up._

“You’re going to tell me what’s going on—” It is in the middle of this sentence that Penny finally looks around and recognizes the state of my room. “Oh…” Her mouth and her vowels match.

“Um…” Now that I look at it, really consider it from another person’s perspective, I look like—

“Are you in love with some guy?”

“No…I…” I rub the back of my neck and try to find the right words to explain what’s going on. There aren’t any.

Any irritation that had been zipping through Penny’s thoughts is gone. She’s up and off the bed in an instant, dashing from one drawing to another.

_Why did I sketch him so many times? Why did I tape them to my wall? Why do they all look so…personal?_

“Simon,” she breathes, tugging a page from above my wardrobe. “He’s lovely.”

“No…I mean, he is. I mean…fuck.” I don’t know what to do or say or feel and my words are not improving things. My desk chair isn’t looking at me with any judgement, and so I settle down into the square plastic seat and put my face in my hands.

“Look,” Penny says, still holding the drawing of… _what was his name?_ The absence brings tears and tears bring sympathy into Penny's voice and I’m not equipped to handle any of it. “You don’t have to tell it all right now. Why don’t you try starting wherever it makes sense and see how far we get?”

_How could I forget? How did I let myself—_

“Simon?” Penny’s hand is small and its clutching at my forearm. “Just start at the beginning.”

…

Some stories are diamonds, created under pressure, details compact and tight in a tiny space. Some stories sprawl, the way the shoreline unwinds around the ocean, meandering and listless.

What I end up telling Penny is like a puzzle, with one central piece missing. 

Still, after what feels like (and ends up being) hours, she knows everything that I remember. I tell her everything.

About halfway through, Penny tore two sheets out of one of my better sketchbooks and taped them to the wall. One had the words **Things We Know** written in big bold letters across the top, while the other had **Things we Don’t Know**.

“So we know that you swapped bodies,” she says, and I don’t detect any skepticism in her voice. For a woman whose first theory was alien abduction, I shouldn’t be surprised, but her unwavering faith in me feels like swallowing something warm.

“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but there’s no way I’m wrong about that.”

“And we know he lives in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.” Penny is rarely this crass. It must be getting late.

“Yeah, but where!” This particular loss feels potent somehow. If I’d just written the name of that stupid town down somewhere…

“Yeah, that’s wildly inconvenient,” Penny says, adding _we don’t know where he lives_ under the **Things We Don’t Know** column. “Still, we’ve got all these,” Penny says, gesturing to the photos papering my walls. “They’re like clues.”

“You think we can find him with a couple of sketches?” That statement is thick with despair.

Penny is shifting around my room, pivoting from image to image. “Some of these are super detailed, Simon. They’re good. Really really good.”

Even in the middle of a crisis, I startle under the praise. I don’t remember the last time someone thought I was really really good at something. Two reallys.

“When you look at these two together,” she says, pulling gently at the tape until it gives way, “it kinda looks like the Lake District.”

I tilt my head to the side, as if the change in perspective will unlock the secrets of my own dark lines. “We could figure it out. But what then?”

Penny looks at me like I’m a prized idiot. “We go there. Obviously.”

“Go there?”

“To see him. Really Simon, it would’ve been helpful if you had just written the name down.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I should’ve been planning for this from the start.” I’m not sure if it’s despair or rage twisting my words. “Should’ve seen it coming as soon as I started swapping bodies with some random bloke who’s a gigantic fucking arsehole and makes my life a living hell—"

“—it was him who put that rainbow on your arse!—”

“and then I’m gonna start to like him and maybe look forward to spending time with him and yeah, maybe fall for him, but wait! Plot twist. I’m gonna have all those lovely fucking memories just taken from me.” It’s pathetic, every word that’s pouring out of me, but I can’t seem to stop. “And now I’m left with nothing but a bunch of stupid drawings and no name. What the fuck was his name?!”

The room is so silent, we can hear the late-night newscast filtering through the crack under the door.

“Well,” Penny finally says, tiptoeing into the minefield of my feelings. “We’re putting the name issue firmly in the **Things We Don’t Know** column. But Simon?”

Her voice is a hook under my chin. “Yeah?”

“We’ll figure this out. Together.”

…

There’s this feeling that’s skirting atop the goosebumps on my arms—it’s almost as if I’m not sure if I put my shirt on the right way or inside out. My day feels uncertain, restless to the point of total dysfunction.

It’s strange, but the thing that’s keeping me standing, plopped like a lump in the middle of the station, are the trains. The sounds of hustling shoes on tile, the smells of oily industry, the mess of bodies with everywhere to go and no time to waste: it’s all living proof that the world doesn’t have to stand still. _And neither do I._

As I hover in the centre of Euston Station, scanning the boards for London Euston to Lancaster, my heartbeat quickens.

_I’m really doing this._

I might find him. I know that the chances are thin. Even Penny could only do so much with a few scraps of paper and ever scrappier memories.

_Still._ The possibility lights up the ventricles of my heart.

Leaving London feels monumental. I’ve never done it before—at least, not in my own body. “Times change,” Penny said when I told her I felt nervous. 

The straps of my backpack are cutting into my shoulders—I brought overnight items just in case things go in a…favourable direction.

The idea that I could see him, could meet him, could ask him his bloody name and watch his face move from judgemental to amused to fond (hopefully. He may also just tell me to bugger off back where I came from, thank you very much, and to stop disturbing his life, cause hadn’t I done it enough already?) (and that would be a fair point, if we’re being honest.)

I readjust my backpack and look at the flimsy ticket shaking between my fingers.

**London Euston to Glasgow Central: 10:10am.**

I suppose it’s time to—

“Simon wait!”

I know the stern edge to that voice better than anyone else on the planet. “Penny, what are you—”

“Hey, Simon.”

Another voice. Another voice _I know._

“Agatha?”

She smiles, soft as the light streaming through the open windows.

“Wha…” My words have stalled. “Why…she…” The sentence will not get out of first gear.

Penny takes over. “I asked her to come. She got a bit curious when I was trying to get your shift covered.”

“You…”

“I think this is a great idea,” Agatha says, with entirely too much enthusiasm.

“Penny,” I splutter. “I asked you…one thing…”

“Yes yes, I know,” she says, waving her hand in much the same way Possibelf does when I’m in the middle of an excuse. “Cover my shift, Penny. And make sure that my alibi checks out. Yadda yadda.” Her hands are on her hips, and I suddenly feel very young.

“I told her that you shouldn’t go alone,” Agatha chimes in.

I don’t think I’ve closed my mouth since this conversation began. “You told her!” Finally, a complete sentence.

“Of course I did,” Penny says, as if this should be the most obvious thing in the world.

“But wh—”

“She said you met the person online?” Agatha says, arching a perfect eyebrow.

“I…I don’t…”

“You can’t be too careful, Simon,” Agatha adds. “It could be a trick. He could be an older man, or someone trying to lure you away from the city.”

“Are you fucking serious?” This—mercifully complete—sentence is aimed squarely at Penny.

“You can’t be too careful,” she says. Her grin could connect the continents. “C’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

“Yes, hurry up, Simon.” A slight spring in her step, Agatha turns and strides away from me towards _my_ platform.

“When did this become a group field trip,” I growl as I fall into step with Penelope. “How did you even get tickets?”

“Oh, I’d decided to come with as soon as you decided to fall in love with the literal boy of your dreams,” Penny says. “This is uncharted territory, Simon! The threads of fate and destiny. Some real ESP shit. I couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

…

“I don’t understand,” I say, trying to catch my breath and keep my arm on Penny’s elbow. “Why don’t they just give you the platform number well in advance?”

Bodies bash into my shoulder, squeeze up into my space, and then fall away again. Hurry, synthesized into a moment of crushing and sweat. 

“You’re trying to apply logic to British Rail,” Penny hollers back, steering me in a direction I can only pray is the correct one. “That’s not a winning fight. Stop nattering and hurry along!”

Penny’s grin is borderline maniacal under the sweeping ceilings as she pushes through the crowds. “Up here! This one’s ours.”

I suppose that it’s not so different from the trains in the tube, all rounded edges and sleek design betraying some principle of aerodynamics and efficiency.

“Why are these trains so fucking long??” I holler up at Agatha and Penny, who are hustling down the platform, looking for our car.

“The commoners have got to walk!” Penny shouts over her shoulder.

“What??”

“Don’t you know?” Penny is slowing down now, cross referencing the car numbers with her ticket. “There are four cabins in the middle that they leave empty to provide the well-to-do passengers in first class a proper buffer. Wouldn’t want them having to rub shoulders with the proletariat.” Her words come out in a huff.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course not! Now hop on!”

The bright beams of daylight mute as we duck up and inside the cabin.

“Hurry, both of you,” Agatha whispers with a bite of impatience. “Let’s get a spot with a table.”

The interior of the cabin is a ghastly combo of red and blue. “Here!” Agatha says, a teensy bit of triumph in her voice. “Come on, have a seat.”

I look up at Agatha, who’s already settle in across from—

“Agatha,” I whisper, not too quietly. “There’s someone sitting here already.”

Seated in the far corner and hiding behind a newspaper in a pose that clearly says, “I do not wish to talk to you,” is a business-looking man. The bloke’s gotta be at least forty, in a smart grey suit that’s worn a little around the sleeves, but still quite sharp. Dude’s wearing bloody cufflinks.

Agatha elbows me in the ribs. “People can share, Simon. Now please, put your behind in the seat.”

“But it’s taken—”

Penny pushes me between the shoulder blades and I trip over my shins as they crack against the edge of the plastic. Even the seats are colour-coordinated, two red, two blue—the vibrancy is hurting my eyeballs. “Why do I have to sit next to the—”

“SO!” Penny says, as she squeezes in next to Agatha. “Let’s go over what we know and what we don’t, shall we?”

The man in the seat next me let’s out two very curt “tut-tut”s, but says nothing. I try desperately to rearrange my knees so that they are nowhere near his just as the train starts to move.

“Close thing,” Penny breathes, dumping her leather weekender on the table and starting to unpack. I try to focus on the sound of a thousand pounds of metal churning forward, of motor machinations and—

“What is all of that?” Agatha asks, picking up a stray page that had drifted onto the floor.

“Reference material,” Penny says, laying photocopies of my drawings and landscape photos of the lake district.

Agatha looks at the now cluttered table top with open suspicion, as the pictures and pamphlets and maps start to come tumbling out. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“They’re clues,” Penny says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

The train rushes into a tunnel just as the man next to me clicks his tongue again. In the half dark, I see two stern brown eyes peer up at me over the newspaper. _Jesus Christ._

“HELLO! CAN YOU HEAR ME! OH NO I THINK I’VE LOST YOU.” A woman with short grey hair and full fleshy cheeks is shouting into her mobile.

“Clues for what?” Agatha asks, and fucking hell, I don’t know how to escape this conversation with my dignity intact.

“Where Simon’s online boyfriend lives—”

“He’s not my—”

“I’M SO SORRY, CAN YOU HEAR ME? DID WE LOSE THE CONNECTION?”

“Wait. Wait wait wait.” Agatha is looking at me with an expression that is either disbelief or total incredulity. “You have an online boyfriend—”

“—he’s not technically my boy—”

“—and you don’t actually know where he lives!” She half shouts this line, and I feel a wash of heat flush through my cheeks.

“It’s complicated.”

“Clearly.”

“IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, DEAR, PLEASE SAY SOMETHING.”

My seatmate not-so-subtly jams fancy Bluetooth headphones into his ears and slumps even father behind his paper fortress. For a moment, I’m jealous.

“Simon is a romantic,” Penny says, grinning up at me and flicking the plastic bottle cap of her soda in my direction. “He didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

Agatha narrows her eyes. “I told you, didn’t I?”

The end of that catastrophic date comes swimming back into view. _“It’s not like that,”_ I’d insisted. And Agatha had just looked at me. Much like she is right now.

“I’m gonna go to the shop,” I say, avoiding Agatha’s prying eyes. “For a sandwich or ten. D’ya want anything?”

“I’M GOING TO DISCONNECT AND TRY AGAIN! DON’T GO ANYWHERE!”

I run my fingers along the red cord on my wrist and try to find some semblance of calm. Somewhere, a baby screams. This is going to be a long ride.

The vaguely Scottish voice of the train announcer—I think she said her name was Lynn—lets us know when our stop is approaching.

We get off at Oxenholme Lake District. It was Penny’s idea. Something about how the mountain formations I’d sketched, “look a bit like the ones outside of Kendall.”

I’d told her that all of the mountain ranges looked the same to me.

“Well, your knowledge of topographical formations is subpar,” she’d said, chucking one of my sketchbooks at my face. “Maybe you should design a find-my-anonymous-boyfriend app for the next time you fall in love with a literal dream boy.”

The train ride to Oxenholme was nearly three hours—three hours of excruciating social pain. The first screaming child had the lung capacity of a fucking opera singer. Before the journey was half done, at least two other infants joined the chorus. The woman on her mobile dialled her mother, and then her stepson, and then her niece, and finally her son’s Maine Coon cat, Colonel Whiskers. Tunnels punctuated each of these calls and elicited panicked shouts of “ARE YOU STILL THERE?” and “I MUST’VE LOST YOU” and “COLONEL WHISKERS NANNY LOVES YOU.”

“Thank fucking god that’s over,” I growl, bending my head and stepping through the exit.

“Two hours and fifty-nine minutes is too long to spend on a train,” Penny says, trailing in my wake. “And I can’t believe grey suit threw his newspaper at you.”

I rub my eyes and try to let them adjust to the daylight. “Tosser,” I half growl, half yawn.

“In his defence, you did spill egg salad in his lap,” Agatha says, taking me by the elbow and leading the way down the platform. There are only two lines in Oxenholme: one heading north and the other travelling back to London.

There’s no crush of bodies, no oppressive noise of feet and traffic and chatter. Just a couple of platforms, a tiny ticket office, and a toilet.

“S’not my fault!” I yelp, a bit stung. “The train was all wobbly.”

“Sure, Simon,” Agatha says, her eyes searching the board for our connection. I’m about to launch into a vehement defence of my actions—I’d even tried to mop up the mess. But apparently that’s harassment. At least, that’s what grey suit had said—when Agatha’s voice sounds loud in the quiet countryside.

“NO!” Agatha moans. Her composure lasted the entire journey. Even when a more-than-tipsy woman in a ghoulish floral blouse had slurred affectionately in her direction. Even when a table party on the other end of the car erupted into a raucous rendition of Billy Joel’s Piano Man.

“What’s wrong—”

“A Bus Replacement Service.” Her words sound like the end of the world. “Probably still haven’t repaired the damage done by the comet after three whole years…” she trails off into a smouldering rage.

“What’s wrong with a bus replacement thinger?” I ask, watching her restraint disappear.

“Everything.”

…

Agatha’s distress does not dissolve. The coach was a bit late (“ _forty-five minutes late!_ ”) the seats were a bit misshaped (“ _I was in train mode, Simon. The last thing I want to see is a bus!_ ”) and the company was…varied ( _“You should not put train people on a bus!_ ) but, eventually, it got us where we needed to go. 

The bus deposits us on the outskirts of a small city that seems to be sagging into the countryside.

“And good riddance,” Agatha shouts after the billowing black exhaust.

Penny stares at Agatha out of the corner of her eye, as if she has just realized that she’s booked travel accommodations with a rabid raccoon.

“What!” Agatha takes offense to Penny’s expression. “Do _not_ throw unexpected busses at me.”

We both know better than to comment.

The world seems to relax the farther from London we travel. Patches of green farmlands roll across seismic shoulder blades. A dozen or so cattle are grazing lazily off in the distance.

Penny cups both of her hands to the side of her face and bellows, “Hey cow!”

“What on earth was that for?” Agatha says, and fixes Penny with almost the same look as she does dirty tables or, apparently, a bus replacement service notification.

“What? I wanted to see if I could get their attention.”

The giant sign at the city’s outer limits reads **KENDAL** in what looks like Comic Sans.

“That sign is suspiciously good natured,” Penny says, glaring at it.

“No, you’ve just been in the city too long,” Agatha replies, still walking with that confident grace after several hours of travel. “My family has a country home in Cornwall. It’s such a contrast to the city. It’s like you can breathe.”

“Your family has a home in Cornwall?” Penny’s incredulity is unmasked—she has never bothered with discretion.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” Agatha says, her voice a summer breeze.

Penny’s voice sounds like the tractor trailer that followed the bus for ten kilometres of the ride here. “But you’re a waitress—

“Who likes to earn the things she has. Please hold your judgements for once you know me better?”

“Fair point, blondie”

“Less arguing,” I say, “more walking. I could eat an entire fucking cow.” I swear to all the magic in the world that this is when the cows look up, fixing me with a stare that almost deters my appetite.

Blisters blooming on my heels, the back of my throat fucking desert, we finally find a storefront that sells food. There’s another cheerier looking cow smiling down at us as we push through the heavy glass door. I’m worried I’ll offend the bovine’s finer sensibilities—especially considering that I’m about to order a giant slab of his thigh muscle—until we’re seated and I’m flipping through the menu.

_Tomato, pesto, and Swiss cheese on fresh sourdough._

_A vegan Shepard’s pie with hints of rosemary, red wine, and a dash of miso_

_Eggplant parmesan, crisped to perfection, served with garden fresh crushed tomatoes._

“No.” This is a disappointment I cannot bear. “No no no.”

“Control yourself, Simon.” Agatha’s manners are not to be trifled with.

But neither are my hunger pains. “I can’t believe that the only restaurant for miles is fucking vegetarian.” It’s a travesty. My tastebuds are throwing themselves into the sea. “Penny. Please tell me there’s somewhere—

“Hello strangers!” A middle-aged waitress approaches our table with three empty glasses and a water jug. “What’s brought you out our way?

I swallow my distress much the same way I expect to swallow any of these suspicious meat impersonators.

“We’re on a bit of an adventure, really.” Penny is sincere as the most plot-driven protagonist. “Looking for this one’s true lo—

“My online boyfriend!” I blurt, and then immediately regret it. The embarrassment is burning my ears off.

“Oh?” The waitress leans in and winks at me. “So, it’s like that, is it?”

“No—”

“It’s _exactly_ like that,” Penny says. “You should see some of the drawings he’s done of him. If feelings could jump off the page—”

“There’s sketches of HIM!” Agatha’s deft fingers are rifling through my backpack before I can intercept. “We spent three hours looking at landscapes when there were pictures of actual people!”

“Please stop.” I did not think that begging was on the menu of daily events, but then, I didn’t account for either Agatha or Penny.

“Why don’t you give me your orders and I’ll get the food started,” the waitress says, her eyes softening.

I let Penny order for me—something with goat cheese and mushrooms and nowhere near enough beef. As the gentle bob of the waitress disappears through the swinging doors separating dining room from kitchen, Agatha leans in. “I can’t believe you only shown me the landscapes. This is much more interesting.”

“This is a fucking nightmare.”

The smells start to dance in the air and it’s a beautiful thing to inhale. My nostrils are feasting before the food arrives, and by the time I’ve cleaned my plate, I’m ready to sell my soul for another serving of whatever that was.

“That was stupidly delicious.” It’s such an understatement, but I feel like it must be made.

“I’ve never known you to discriminate where food is concerned,” Agatha says, and Penny "hear hears" through a mouthful of potatoes.

They’re still picking at their meals and I’m back to scrutinizing the slopes of the hills, the shape of the school, the husks of whatever had stood above the tombs. Underneath all of my optimism and the urgent need to hold him ( _fuck, what was his name?_ ), the loose particles of want and misguided optimism are starting to settle, the detritus of my impossible dreams.

Staring at the lines of a life I lived but that I will never be able to see in three dimensions is not going to make him magically appear. It’s all possibility that will never be coloured in. I think I’m ready to put my disappointment into words. “Maybe we should call it a day—”

“Oh.” The waitress is back, her forearm reaching for my plate a gentle intrusion into my despair. “That’s a lovely drawing of Sandside.”

“What…what did you just say?”

“That’s Sandside isn’t it?” The question pulls a memory out of the rubble. Because it is. Sandside. How did I ever forget?

“Yes!” I shout with a far too much enthusiasm.

“Hunny, you should come out here and see this.” The waitress's voice is tinged with something darker that I can’t quite place. “My husband was born in Sandside.”

I see a sharp jaw with a spattering of stubble over my shoulder. And then I see his eyes; they’re hungry.

“Oh, son, that’s lovely. It makes me miss it something terrible.”

“Is it near here?” My excitement is still ready to boil. We’re so close. I’m almost there. _I’d travel through every star system to find you. A jaunt across the country is nothing._

That look, though, won’t leave their eyes. “It…it was.”

Penny’s ears are twitching, a bunny rabbit who’s scented danger. “Wait,” she says, and the words takes forever to come out. “Did you say Sandside?”

Agatha’s fork clatters against porcelain—and my god does that sound feel finite. “No…” Her hands cover her mouth. “Isn’t that where that comet struck?” 

“What do you mean?” I say, not bothering to mask my confusion. 

“Three years ago, a comet struck Sandside,” the waitress is saying, but it all feels like an echo. Like a dream within a dream within a dream.

_By the time the date’s over, you should be able to see the comet in the sky._

No. It can’t be…

“It was the day of the summer festival. Almost everyone in the town d—”

“How far is it?” I force the words through the panic.

“Twenty or so kilometres. Follow the river Kent down and…”

I let my eyes swim out of focus, let the waves take my attention and send it out to sea. I can’t bear to look—not at the sad lines around a husband’s eyes or the loss heavy between words, the way that the connective tissue of this story they’re telling is made of tragedy.

I hear Penny asking all of the right questions. “Is there a way to get down there? A bus maybe?”

“The busses stopped travelling that way after the comet.”

“A taxi then?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course.”

All I can see is his face—sharp and dark and lovely. All I can hear is his voice.

_By the time the date’s over, you should be able to see the comet in the sky._

I’ve come this far.

I have to go the whole way.

…

Grey pavement carves a path through the countryside. Penny and Agatha are sitting in the back, words are slurred by anxious fingers, casting the occasional panicked glance up at me.

My forehead is feverish against the cool moisture of the passenger window, my curls sticking to the pane. The pieces are starting to take shape, the details are starting to fit snugly into place. A memory of his car at night, winding up this rolling motorway.

_I’d found my way into fifth gear and the pavement was unfurling in front of me. I hadn’t wanted to go back._

I was on this road the night he taught me to drive (looking back, even as the memories start to soften, I know it must’ve been him).

_“I wish I weren’t alone right now.” I’d been talking to the wind. “It’d be nice to have someone to run out the road with.”_

And he’d answered. (It was him. I know it was.)

_I’m here, Simon._

The pavement is a grey ribbon, connecting me to my final destination. I don’t need to see the familiar shoreline to know that we’re close. I can feel it, a match inside my heart; it’s like coming home.

“This is as far as we can go,” the cabby says, pulling up into the familiar washboard parking lot. Sandside Secondary is a bit run down, the windows boarded, little sprigs of grass and wildflowers peeking through stray nooks and crannies, but it’s still standing. A rough draft of what I remember.

Agatha is out of the car first, Penny right behind.

I hear the birds overhead, and I try to hold on to the sound. 

There’s a scattered line of orange pylons, blue police tape shuddering against the breeze. The setting sun catches against a wall of metal, tall as my shoulders, that leads up to a—

“Oh.”

The ledge of a giant crater.

My world pans out as I take in the destruction, a portrait of what had once been a town and is now…

I’d known that Sandside would eventually fall back into the sea—that the waves would nuzzle against the shore one too many times, and would slowly take the town with it.

This is nothing like that.

Rubble is poking out of the water like floating trash, misshapen and scattered. There are no buildings, no homes—it’s all gone to pieces, missing limbs and stray railroad tracks. Everywhere my head turns, there’s more wreckage.

More proof that this town—that this boy—no longer exists.

“Hey, is this place really where he’s from?” Agatha.

“No. No way.” Penny. “You must’ve confused it with somewhere else.”

“No.” Me. “No I didn’t. This was the place. This schoolyard. These mountains. Even this high school. I remember it all.”

“There’s no way that you could, though, Simon.” Penny’s voice is a nervous laugh. “You have to know about that disaster three years ago. Hundreds of people died.”

“They died?” _No._ “Three years ago?” _No no no._

I’m gasping for breath.

Memories are dancing with ghosts, are dancing with lines, are dancing with dreams. I can’t breathe. I can’t…

“Simon.” Agatha’s arm takes my elbow. “It’s time to go.”


	13. From Here On After Is the Netherworld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Losing the thread. Coming undone. The longest of long shots. A town that can’t decide if it wants to be magic or not. Rogue comets, the cheat codes for the game of life, and a boy who blusters but does not weep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter leans heavily on the magic of Billy Joel's Piano Man. Please, if you would like the full effect of my favourite scene in this whole damn fic, play this while reading. You'll know when. You can listen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVjTlTdIDQ&ab_channel=billyjoelVEVO).
> 
> Right, beautiful readers. Thank you for being so patient as this fic crawled out into the world. The final chapters of this story move, gather speed, and hurtle towards their conclusion. So i'll be posting twice a week until this is done. Because I can't wait.   
> Happy reading!

**Simon**

Penny brings us to a library and it is this gentle touch of familiarity—of me and Penny hiding out in between shelves—that pulls me down from my dissociative daze. 

“The comet HumDrum11 with an orbital period of 1200 years made a close approach to earth three years ago in June. Nobody expected that its nucleus would split at its perigee.” Penny’s reading to me from a computer screen. I hold onto her voice. Focus on it. Cling to it.

“The fragment that broke off became a meteor and struck the UK. It looks like that day was the same date at the summer festival. At 8:42pm, it fell where people were gathered.”

It hurts. The words hurt. I want it to stop. But it can’t. Not until I know.

“Over 500 people died, it was over half the town’s population and now, nobody lives in Sandside anymore.”

Agatha keeps darting in and out of the stacks, bringing back book after book. Illustrated anthologies, a list of the victims, a magazine featuring braided chords, a genealogical catalogue of all the old families and the way they styled their manors.

“Wait,” I say, my eyes catching on gold filigree. “That’s the list of…” I almost can’t say it. “The dead?”

“Simon, I don’t know if that’s—”

“I need to see it.”

We should’ve turned on more lights. Something solemn is hanging in the stacks.

I find Niall first.  _ Stretch.  _ The name snaps back into place as soon as I see it on the page.  _ Fucking weird. _ In tiny black script. Niall Cragshore. Age 18.

And then Dev. Devereaux Grimm, Age 18.  _ Square. _ An identity synthesized to a memorial, to a single line in a book in a library no one visits. The threads of history have them by the ankles and have pulled them under—out of this story forever.

And then.

Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch. Age 18.

_ Basilton. Basil. Baz. How did I ever forget? _

I came here to ask him his name. I didn’t think I’d find it this way. A neat entry on a list of the dead.

“That’s him,” I whisper. Two words, the truth, and the end.

“That’s him!” Penny has pushed away from the table. She’s yelling in a library. She’s—“You're wrong, you’ve got to be. This guy died three years ago!”

_ Just a week ago he said I’d be able to see the comet. _

That means…

I…I…what was I…

Was it all just a dream? Did I remember seeing the scenes on the TV three years ago…and just…create a fantasy? The perfect posh life, an escape from a world that didn’t want much to do with me?

If it’s not that, is he…a ghost?

Or did I make it all up? The whole thing?

“I’m losing the thread,” I say and the tears fall, heavy and hot on the pages. “I’m coming undone.”

**Agatha**

Simon’s a mess. I don’t really know what else to call it. Catatonic? Delusional? 

"We need to get Simon and these books out of here," I'd said to Penny.

The prospect of “grand book larceny!” Penny whisper-wailed, had put her off her game. “We can’t! We just can’t!”

I took one look at Simon, his face in his hands. The pose was all wrong. Simon blunders and blusters; he does not weep. “Simon needs it, Penny. Plus, I’ll make sure they all get returned before we head home tomorrow.”

After some illicit borrowing that involved Penny distracting the already pliable librarian and me shoving books into my purse, Penny’s knapsack, and (eventually) the back of my high waisted jeans, we made our escape.

And now…well now he’s holed up in the hotel room we’ve booked for the evening, pouring over books, searching the pages for a boy who died three years ago. Obsessed.

I couldn’t look at him anymore. I just couldn’t.

There's a tiny bar attached to this hotel in the middle of nowhere. The rain smells like regret as I push the back door open.

“You smoke?” Penny’s voice catches me by surprise.

I turn on her and give her my best single eyebrow. Girls like Penny always assume that they know girls like me—they assume that reading the book jacket and will reveal everything you need to know about what's on the inside.

“I did,” I answer, slipping the filter between my lips.

“What happened?” As if some tragedy needed to befall me to explain a single diversionary  _ bad _ habit.

“It’s been a long day,” I sigh, lifting the lighter up to the tip and breathing in. The smoke smoulders in my chest and the chill that’s possessed me since we stepped out onto the edge of what had once been Sandside warms, if only a little.

A little is better than nothing.

“I’ve never seen Simon like this,” Penny says, crossing her arms across her chest. I can see the tips of her knuckles, bright white under the swaying yellow bulb.

“Me neither,” I say, letting the smoke ease out through my lips. You can barely see it, dainty little puffs, mixing with the dew. “But he’s been different for a while now.”

We let the buzz of the cheap light and the hum of the crickets do the talking. But Penelope is not one to delay gratification—she wants it five minutes before you offered. Uncompromising. I can see why they get along so well, her and Simon.

“What do you think about what he’s saying? About this guy and Sandside? It seems impossible.” Her voice breaks the silence like peanut brittle.

“It does,” I say and mean it, because I’ve seen the name on the page, listed among the dead. But… “But, whatever’s going on with him, he’s been different. He’s changed? I...” I take another long drag and try to decide how much of myself I want to show to Penelope Bunce. “I had feelings for him. I think. He was…”

“He was what?” She’s more anxious than she’s letting on and I wonder what it would be like to watch someone I cared for slowly fall apart. “More posh? With better hair maintenance. And smoother words?”

“That, but…” It was more than that. “He took a second and really saw me. As more than a pretty face or a happy ending.”

Judging by the wrinkles on her forehead, I think Penny may be re-evaluating her opinion of me and not for the first time today. “He did?”

I nod. “And however strange this all seems, I think he’s met someone. And that person’s changed him. And…that was worth the trip.”

“You know what, Aggie?” Penny says, uncoiling one of her hands from her chest and wrapping it around my waist (she’s at least four inches shorter than me). “I think we’re going to make great friends.”

“Not if you call me Aggie.”

“You’ll grow to love it.”

“I doubt that.”

**Simon**

They’d only had one room left to let. With Penny, I wouldn’t’ve worried. Would’ve just given her the bed and slept on the sofa. But having Agatha here feels different. A new chemical introduced to our normally stable equation. Penny’s right; friendship is overrated. It’s confusing, and the emotions are sticky.

I must’ve fallen asleep—the length of the day taking its toll, a payment for the knowledge imparted.

I keep repeating his name in my head.  _ Baz. It’s Baz. Basilton. Baz Pitch. _

“Hey.” I sometimes genuinely wonder if Agatha is half angel. I mean, I’ve got magic, so anything is possible. It’s something in the way she walks, all shoulders and grace. I barely hear her, even in the middle of a busy restaurant with a tray of thirty glasses in one hand and five plates riding up her left arm. “ _It’s less skill, more confidence, Simon_ ,” she’d said once, but I think she’s full of it. I could be as confident as I wanted and still pitch any tray with more than three cups into the nearest patron’s lap.

“Hey.” It’s more a croak than a word, but it came out, and that’s something.

“What are you reading?”

I’d honestly forgotten. The last few hours have felt more like a dream than the last month of my life ever did.  _ His name is Baz. It’s Baz. Baz Baz Baz. _

I look down at the television-stand-turned-desk and see a magazine, the photos all glossy and brightly coloured.

“Braided cords?” Agatha says, leaning in. The tips of her hair land on the pages. “Pretty.”

_ Baz had a braided cord. He tied his hair with it. _

“There was a lot of superstition in Sandside,” I say, trying to figure out how to tell this story. “People there still kinda believed in magic.”

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Agatha says, sighing through a smile.

“Would it?”

She doesn’t answer, but leans in a little closer, pressing her nose so close to the page it’s almost touching. “That band on your wrist. That’s one, isn’t it?”

I startle. “One what?”

“A braided cord?”

I look down at the red cord. I’ve had it for years. The memory of where I got it is fuzzy, but the pattern and the stitching look so similar. “Yeah,” I say. “I wear it sometimes. Like a cross. Kind of a good luck charm.”

_ Fuck, where did I get it?  _

“Someone told me that the cords represent the flow of time,” I say, as I feel the memory tickling at the back of my mind. “They twist and tangle. Unravel and connect and that’s what time is.” Fuck, my memories have less density than a bowl of alphabet soup.

“Maybe if I could…”

The pot is stirring, the letters are soggy and barely shaping words, but there’s enough there for a query. A thought, becoming an idea, becoming a plan.

“Are you alright?”

_ What if we weren’t just switching places. What if we were switching times? _

“Yeah. Just gonna…get some sleep.” I’m a terrible liar, but Agatha lets it be.  _ There’s only one place where this could work. _

_ We swapped bodies. And we swapped times. It's possible. It's magic.  _

“Me too.”

Penny’s snoring gently on the bed. “You want the couch?”

_ The magic of Natasha Pitch. Always looking for the right dance floor. The right steps.  _

“No. That would leave you with the floor.”

_Our times got tangled and maybe…just maybe…I can unravel them._

“That’s fine—”

“The bed is enormous. I’ll bunk with Penny.”

“I like her like this,” I say, definitely fond.

“Unconscious?” I think Agatha’s trying to be funny, and it makes me smile.

“Not worrying about me.”

“Of course.”

I slip out at somewhere past one o’clock and before dawn. There’s a note on the table, with just enough detail that they won’t worry I was kidnapped but not enough for them to find me.

Cause this…whatever plan is drifting to the surface…well, it’s weirder than aliens and I’m not sure I’m ready for anyone to see.

“Um,” I say, shouldering up to the front desk and setting my elbows on the shiny surface. “Is there any way I could…rent someone’s car?”

“You’re that strange fellow who’s obsessed with Sandside aren’t you?” The overnight receptionist looks a little down on his luck—greasy hair, a couple missing teeth.

I’d forgotten how quickly news travels in a small town, and how unflattering a little gossip can be. “I dunno if I’m strange,” I say, a little miffed. “But yeah. I wanna drive out there. See if I can find a…special place.”

He stares at me for a long time, and the awkwardness doesn’t leave me with many places to look. Wrinkled shirt (I wonder if his boss gives him as much shit as mine), a name tag covered in fingerprints that reads Nicodemus (does everyone out here have strange names?). He gives me an appraising look.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I try not to sigh. “Wouldn’t be asking if I weren’t, mate.”

“You can take mine for fifty quid.”

I say yes before I ask what he drives. When he walks me up to his Fiat Cinquecento and hands me the keys (with a set of metal fangs dangling from the ring), I feel the sharp pains of regret. But the rain is starting to feel less gentle and more bristling and I’m desperate.

The road feels like it’s calling me, like I left something behind in Sandside and the ocean is trying to pull me into it—to swallow me and swallow me until I’m barely lines on paper. 

I yank open the rusty driver’s side door, slip inside, and turn on the ignition. It’s a good thing someone taught me to drive.

…

The sun rises as the wreckage of Sandside comes into view, a scar on the horizon. Rain glances off the windshield, and Nico’s wipers do little to blink it away. A thin piece of rubber dangles off plastic, making a god-awful noise every time it scrapes across the window.

_ I hope it’s still here. _

My mind won’t turn off.

_ It was far enough out of Sandside, it should’ve survived the blast. _

It’s the longest of long shots. But I have to go. I have to try.

_ If the school made it, then it should’ve too. _

The turn off is still an afterthought—invisible to everyone who hasn’t been told where the secret lies.

But I’ve been shown. A memory of roaring down this back road with Fiona Pitch makes my heart stir in my chest. _I wonder if she made it out. Or if she died too._

The suspension in this tin bucket is the space between the wheel wells and the dirt and so the ride down the lane leaves a bruise on my tailbone. Colours fold in on themselves, an organic origami of greens that come to life the deeper you travel—it’s magical. I’m counting on it.

I slam the car into park and jump outside, breathing in the early morning damp.

_ It’s here. It’s still here. _

My legs are barely beneath me before I’m striding across the lawn. It’s the basement, the graveyard, the only piece that the ruins left intact. It survived whatever bloody struggle happened before my story started and so of course it survived a star crashing to earth.

The Catacombs.

A memory whispers in my ear, just as I climb through the entrance and start my descent, down down, down.  _ From here on after is the netherworld. _

The smell of moss and standing water are thick in the air. I should’ve brought a candle; Baz would’ve brought a torch just for the drama of it. All I have is the white light shining out of my ancient flip phone. If I focus on the gravel crunching under my feet or the feel of the rain, heavy in the air, maybe I can pretend that this isn’t my last chance to see him.

_ Our times got tangled. I just need to untangle them. It’s nothing, really. _

I know that I’m playing fast and loose with logic. That Fiona’s superstitions and the tall tales of a few old families won’t amount to anything more than a me crying in the dust and dirt rather than a hotel room in the next town over.

That I’m imagining whatever warm thing is churning in my guts, like cough syrup on fire. That it’s got hold of the muscles and tendons in my legs and is steering me, a magical marionette, towards some kind of foregone conclusion.

I see a pile of dead roses— _ they were white roses _ , I think, the memory flitting up to greet me and then receding back into the cold and the damp and the silence.

“There were roses and whiskey and records,” I say to no one. “And I thought I could see people dancing. But that was probably my eyes playing tricks.” _ It was probably nothing. I was probably— _

“It wasn’t,” she says, and the sheer shock of it sends my bones jumping through my skin. “But time can be fickle that way.”

Spinning around doesn’t help matters. Because there’s a woman standing there who was not there before and I was counting on my eyes to put the world back into perspective.

My sleepless synapses are firing without rhyme or reason, the very edge of my sanity completely worn away. Eroded by the sea and the waves of these fucking memories and this goddamn town that can’t decide if it wants to be magic or not.

“Who…” Words have stalled. “What…” Who needs words anyway? “How…”

She puts me out of my misery. “I’m Natasha. And you are not my son.”

Bursts of logic fire in my brain. Natasha Pitch. Baz’s mum. Who died ten years ago.

“Why do you feel like him?” She’s talking. A ghost. Is talking to me.

“I feel like him?” This should not be the question. There are so many better questions, but I’ve never been a very good protagonist. 

“You do. His fire. I can feel it inside of you. I thought—” Her voice breaks and I feel ten years of loss and longing in her momentary lapse. “I thought you were him. I’ve been looking for him. Can you tell me why he’s not here?”

At the beginning of this day, as I stood in Euston Station dreaming of train rides to everywhere, I did not think I would be sharing stories with a ghost or explaining how rogue comets had stolen her son from me.

“He…um…there was a comet.”

That aristocratic brow looks just the same on her 18-year-old son when he’s cross or confused. “A comet?”

“It…it broke apart in the sky and a piece fell and hit the town. He was there…he…he…” This word, it seems, will not come out.

“He’s not gone, though,” she says with the inflection of a question. “I’ve been walking behind the veil for years. He’s not there.”

“Are you dead?” It sounds daft, and a bit rude. But I’m confused and the world is a frame that’s been knocked off kilter and I need someone to straighten it for me.

She turns her cheek, tosses her long black hair over one shoulder, and steps a little closer to the light streaming out of my phone.

The scars are the unmistakable work of burns. The last marks of the fire that spirited her away from this world and into the next one.

_ So that’s a yes. _ “You don’t have to be so dramatic about it,” I mumble, and she laughs. A full-bodied thing that sends the fire inside me flaring to life.

“The veil between this world and the next one will thin on occasion. This is especially true down here.” She looks around, eyes catching on the record player, still sitting next to her tomb. “We were right about some things. And so very very wrong about others.”

“But wait. If he’s not with you on the other side, and he’s not here, with me—” My voice cracks. I want him here with me. “Where is he?”

Even dressed in the memories of her death, Natasha Pitch moves with grace. She walks towards me, all height and dignity. “Time is more a thread than a straight line. We were right about that. They assemble and take shape. They twist and they tangle and unravel now and then. Break and reconnect. That’s what time is.”

I feel like I’m stealing secrets I should never know. Like I’ve scribbled the cheat codes for the game of life.

She reaches out and takes my face in her hands. Both hands. One smooth the other melted, each far more corporeal than a ghost has any right to be. “I always thought I’d be the one to unravel it. To take the threads and just trace them back and back and back.” Her hands are cold.  _ Just like the day I’d held Baz’s hands in mine and we stood amongst the stars. _

“But I’d never’ve managed it. I didn’t have the magic. And I imagine it would require more than anyone in the world could possess.”

_ The day I gave him a piece of me and he’d given me a piece of him… _

“But you,” she says, and the way she’s looking at me reminds me a bit of Ebb. “Magic is rolling off you in waves. Yours. So much of it is yours. But I believe that, somehow, there is some part of him living inside you.”

_ Cough syrup laced with fire.  _

“Wait.” I step back, trying to remember how to breathe. “You think I…can unwind…time?”

“You stand here, with his magic inside you, and my braided cord on your wrist, and enough magic to explode the sun on a day when the veil is thin?” She’s pinned me with a look. “Yes. I think, if anyone could, it would be you. Now be dear and go and put that record on.”

“What?”

“I’ve been ten years without Billy Joel and, in spite of the slings and arrows Fiona may launch at the poor man, this album is glorious.”

“You want me to put on—”

“Yes please. And quickly. I haven’t much time left.”

When the mother (and ghost) of the bloke you fancy, who may also be dead, asks you to play her some Billy Joel, there’s really only one thing to do.

I lean down and blow the dust off the turntable, slip the record out of its sleeve, and let the needle down gently.

“You know,” I say, standing up and trying to make Natasha Pitch out in the darkness. “Harmonica solos are kinda underrated.”

“You’re just the kind of boy Basil will need. Now, come here. Let’s try to put this right.”

The hows of the operation are still woefully underexplored. “Uh, Mrs. Pitch?”

She shushes me with a wave of her hand. “Dancing will help. Don’t worry, Simon.”

“Dance—”

“Don’t worry. I will lead, and you can’t tread on the feet of a ghost,” she says, despite the very solid hand on my waist.

“Is this really necessary?”

“Dancing is a lot like time, really,” she says. “If I’d managed to figure that out while I was alive, more than a few things would’ve made much more sense.”

I don’t know what to say but I don’t think she expects an answer. It suddenly strikes me how lonely being a ghost would be.

“You twist and turn.” We’re moving fast and I’m not sure where my feet are. But it doesn’t seem to matter.

“You break apart,” she says, leaving me to watch her elegant steps send the ghostly fabric of her skirt spinning. I catch glimpses, half of full-bodied elegance, half of tattered cloth licked by fire. “And reconnect,” she says, and Baz’s mum has solved the puzzle of my feet.

“I need you to think about him, Simon, and then I need you to let your magic go.”

“But how?” I’ve never done this with an intention behind it. 

“Light a match inside your heart. And then blow on the tinder.”

“Should I let…all of it go?” The room is spinning, the record is turning and I’ve lost the thread.

“Yes, I think so. But only if you’re willing. I don’t think you’ll get it back.”

“Of course,” I gasp, because the world is starting to blur. The darkness slipping into a summer day with torches and whiskey, slipping into a man with a torch and Baz’s widow’s peak crying at the foot of his wife’s grave, slipping into two boys, one drunk and one angry, both spitting insults, slipping into  _ ashes ashes we all fall down _ , slipping into the next memory and the next and the next. 

“What’s happening?”

“Your magic, Simon.”

_ Right.  _ I’ve closed my eyes now. It’s too much, seeing the history of this place flip between moments, the pages caught in the wind of whatever I’ve started to do.

I imagine myself unlocking every door, opening every window, turning every tap. I wasn’t sure that magic could work like this, could be channelled into something that I want, that I need.

I need you, Baz. 

And then I see him.

_ A boy with long dark hair. It feels like I’m looking at him without glasses, through a frosted window. He’s far away, something vague.  _

_ I need him closer. _

_ I feel like I’m treading through something cold and thick. Pushing back a veil, made of moisture and memories. _

_ The features come into focus, each one clearer as I force my legs to move. _

_ Cheekbones casting elegant lines that I want to trace with my fingertips. A full mouth, that’s smoothed into something thoughtful. _

_ Fucking hell. _

_ For those first few seconds, he’s unguarded. There’s something easy in the lines of his face. _

_ His downturned chin tilts up, and I look into those grey eyes for the first time. He sees me and I see him and there’s nothing between us. _

_ Holy shit. _

_ His guard is down. I know it, cause I see it go up just as quick. The sharp edges start to feel that way. _

_ “Are you dancing alone?” _

_ “Can you see me?” I can’t help it. I gasp. _

_ “I don’t…I don’t know.” _

Fire and smoke twist circles around us, roaring to life in time to the music.

“Open your eyes, Simon. You will not want to miss this.”

It hurts, to pull my eyes open and it hurts again to try and see the world around me.

The Catacombs have fallen away like flakes of old paint, pieces of the world disappearing into the threads and the smoke and the flames.

All that I can hold onto is the cold hand of Natasha Pitch. She’s stopped dancing.

“Before you go, I need you to give this to him. When you see him again.” She presses her lips to my forehead.  _ No one’s ever kissed me there before, _ I think. _ Is this what it feels like, to have your mum kiss you? _ “And you’ll need to tell him this. This exactly.”

Whatever edges that a ghost can have are starting to fade. The magic is catching her details and pulling the loose thread. “Tell him that, when his father proposed knee deep in the middle of the ocean, I told him that I would hang the moon for his pleasure. Please tell him that.”

“I will.”

“Take care of him, Simon.”

I grin as the world comes undone. I grin because, “He won’t need it.”

“I know.” Her smile says everything. “But do it anyway.” 

_ She knew my name. She’s known it the whole time. How did she know my name? _

The world is starting to disappear. All of it. All I can see are red threads and all I can hear is a piano solo playing through time. The last thing I feel are Natasha Pitch’s broken hands pushing me into the void of magic and time and hope.

This isn’t going off, I think. It’s going out.

With a fucking bang.

…

**_At first, there’s nothing. And then, there’s darkness. And finally, a red cord._ **

_ The sun’s rays are unforgiving and they stream determinedly though the hospital windows. There’s a woman in the bed in a wrinkled white gown, looking a thousand shades of exhausted. The smile on her face, however, collects up all the attention in the room and holds on to it. You can’t look away from a smile like that. _

_ “We’ll call him Tyrannus. It’s a family name.” _

_ “We can’t call him that.” It’s a male voice, older, clutching her limp fingers between his own. “He’ll be teased within an inch of his life.” _

_ “Tyrannus Basilton. And he can choose which one he likes.” _

_ “You do realize the two options you’re giving him are both horrendous?” _

_ “Are you calling my traditional Pitch names, that we have held sacred for hundred of years, that we have passed down for generations, horrendous? Malcolm?” _

_ “Yes,” he says, in a tone that betrays how much he loves her. “I believe I am.” _

**_I don’t know if I’m travelling forward or back. I’m not sure that there is a forward or back._ **

_ Dust clouds shift and take shape, float away and then explode into puffy abstractions. Dev’s behind the wheel of a Lexus that still manages to be shiny in a dustbowl. Baz is sitting, his arms crossed across his chest, tight. Impenetrable. _

_ “Are you going to tell me where you’re going?” _

_ “No.” _

_ Dev slams on the breaks, and Baz’s seatbelt saves him from a nasty collision with the dash. _

_ “Devereaux, what the actual fuck—” _

_ “I’m done being patient.” The playful edges that round Dev out, that make him different from the harsher casting of his cousin, are suddenly no-nonsense. _

_ “Where’s this coming from?” Baz is trying to dodge the question; I can see it in the way his jaw clenches, in the way his tone comes out just a little bit less controlled. _

_ “You’ve been so fucking weird lately. And like, I’m willing to give you a lot of slack, Baz. Cause I know you and I know how you get sometimes. But this…” _

_ He trails off, hoping, I think, that Baz will interrupt. Will do him the courtesy of finishing his sentence. _

_ Baz does no such thing, and so Dev persists, blundering into something that must pass for concern. “This has gone on too long. I’m…I’m worried about you. So like…tell me. Something. Anything!” _

_ “I’m going to London.” Baz inches out into neutral space. _

The fuck! When did Baz go to London!

_ “What? Why?” _

_ “No reason—” _

_ “Baz, I swear to Christ I’m not moving this fucking car until you talk to me.” _

_ “For a…” The pause lasts a million years. “For a date.” _

**_Just a thread, twisting_ **

_ Seeing my own body, completely starkers, and it should be a shock. But when you’re in a vortex of memories and falling stars, when you’re tumbling through time without a tether, the shock doesn’t land. _

_ There’s a dozen rainbow tattoos— _

_ temporary tattoos, I remember, and grin _

_ —discarded in the rubbish bin. _

_ “I need to make sure he can’t quite touch it,” I hear myself hissing. “His arms have quite a reach for how gangly they initially appear.” Even when I’m not there to hear it, he’s still needling me. _

_ The look though, the intensity with which he is staring into the bathroom mirror as he lines up my bare arse with the upturned tattoo, is Baz distilled to his essence—fucking single-minded and ruthless. _

**_twisting and turning_ **

_ The bed is monstrous, all gargoyles and black four posters and far too large. The duvet cover almost makes up for the gothic feel—it’s alive with knights and swords and dragons breathing fire. The boy under the covers is Baz in miniature, looking up at a woman untouched by flames and tragedy. Seeing them together, two Pitches with all the same ingredients—determined chins, sharp cheeks, long dark hair—makes my chest feel like it’s melting. _

_ “What story would you like to read tonight?” _

_ “You sing to Mordy.” Baz looks a bit put out, jealous even. _

_ “Does that mean that you want me to sing to you?” _

_ Even then, so young, I can see him wrestling with whether or not he should let her see how much he needs her. Whether or not to be vulnerable. “Yeah,” he says finally and I can breathe again.  _

_ Natasha reaches down and runs her long fingers through his hair. Baz is half asleep, I think, before she starts singing. _

_ “Twinkle twinkle, little star.” _

**_taking shape, reconnecting_ **

_ “I couldn’t save her.” I don’t know the man who’s a puddle on the floor, back pressed against the wall, legs loose and limp on the cold tile of the Pitch kitchen. There are coloured lights (Christmas lights) strung in sloping loops along the crown molding and the bright colours betray the mood of this place: sombre rather than celebratory. _

_ “Get your shit together, Malcolm. Get up and figure it out.” I know that voice. I know the Dr. Martens and the cargo jacket. She is a woman who breathes fire. _

_ “I can’t.” _

_ “It’s not about you anymore,” Fiona says, crowding into his space and pulling his hands away. They’re damp. They’re so damp. _

_ The face behind them has Baz’s eyes, but none of his elegance. “I’m going to tell you this just once, Malcolm. You either get up and put yourself back together and find a way to be strong for your kids.” Sympathy turns to danger in an instant. “Or you get the fuck out of my sister’s house and you don’t come back.” _

**_tangling and unravelling_ **

There’s someone with golden curls, streaked with a little grey around the temples. Freckles all over, but a few smile lines added in. Plain blue eyes, that look worn and then worn again without a rest. A soft green shirt, fuller shoulders, but the resemblance is undeniable. He kinda…well, he looks like me.

Baz’s here too, his hair still long, a hint of scruff making him look even more delicious than usual. He’s got his cheek pressed into my shoulder in affection so casual it makes me want to cry, but his eyes aren’t on me. They’re down, looking at exactly the thing that’s occupying my attention.

A tiny little fist, with tiny little fingers, clutching my index finger.

**_this is what time is_ **

_ And then the sky—we’re in the sky!—splits open and I see it. The comet, tearing the night in two, colours exploding into life. _

_ I reach out to touch it. It’s a futile thing—you can’t introduce yourself to a force of nature—but I need to try. _

_ HumDrum11 is tearing a hole in the atmosphere and showing the whole world that magic really does exist. _

_ Nothing more or less than a beautiful view. _

_ When it breaks apart, celestial blues and greens and purples transform into fire and sparks, a crescendo screaming it’s finale as it crashes into the atmosphere. _

_ I look down, following the inevitable trajectory, and that’s when I see him. _

_ The wind is tossing hair around his face and he’s reaching for me, his hand outstretched, as the meteor makes contact. And then all the colour is gone. _

_ The world doesn’t end in fire or ice. _

_ It fades to black. _


	14. The World is Upside Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One final switch, some next level crazy shit, the wild throes of a desperate love, and a red cord connecting everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick process note: the early warning system that will be referenced in this chapter may not be something you see in the UK, but they are an essential part of the plot (which originally took place in Japan in the film), so I thought I'd explain quickly.  
> There are basically tall speakers set up like telephone poles across the town, all connected so that, in the case of a disaster, that the entire town could be warned at once. Hope this helps :)

**Simon, as Baz**

A soft orchestral arrangement nudges me awake—the approach so gentle, it could be a lover’s touch.

“I wanna go back,” I groan, delirious from the dancing and the memories, from watching the exploding sun in my chest go quietly into the abyss, surrendering to the needy tug of time.

_ Shit. That didn't sound like my voice... _

I don’t think my eyes have every flow open faster. My hands have long thin fingers. I can feel long hair touching the nape of my neck. I'm—

“I’m…It’s…I’m Baz!”

I wrap my arms around him (around me) (around us).

It worked. I can’t believe it actually worked.

_ Wait. I should go make sure it worked.  _ It’d better not be one of those time loop things where I have to relive the same period over and over until I get something right. That would be utterly ridiculous.

I pull on a pair of jeans—imagine that, Baz in jeans—two legs at a time and grab the first shirt I see (ironed, even the casual ones), and fish Baz’s phone out of his bedside drawer. It’s still singing sweet symphonies at me, but has shifted into something with more brass.

Pretentious git.

I’m looking up Dev’s contact number with something close to mania. He picks up on the second ring and I’m still impatient.

“Dev!”

“Baz? What d’you want?”

“Is the comet still in the sky?”

“Good morning to you too, beautiful. I’m doing well, thanks.”

“I’m being serious, Dev,” I growl into the speaker. “The comet. It’s still up there, right?”

“Where the fuck else would it be?”

“Thank god.”

“What’s this about? Are you okay?”

“Fine. I need you to come and pick me up.”

“Again?”

“Uh.” Again? “Yeah, I guess.”

“You gonna tell me more about why you went to London?”

“What?” What does he mean, why I went to London? I don’t remember Baz coming to London. “Uh, no,” is what I go with and Dev seems accepting enough. “So, you’ll come get me?”

“Of course, cool your jets. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Oh, and grab Niall.”

“Really?” He pauses, and I swear I can hear his look through the phone.

“Are you two together yet?” I can’t help it. This might be my last chance and it’s a tragedy that they haven’t figured it out.

“I’m hanging up now,” Dev says, and is true to his word. The line goes dead.

I gargle some mouthwash, throw my hair in a messy bun with a plain black hair elastic (I can’t find Baz’s red cord anywhere) and dash down the stairs two at a time.

The sound of the morning newscast welcomes me into the kitchen. It’s empty but for a lovely spread of breakfast foods—sometimes, I swear Fiona magics them into existence—that I immediately start to pillage. Best to ask for forgiveness than permission and all that. 

“For all you stargazers out there, the comet HumDrum11 has been visible to the naked eye for about a week now. Tonight it will finally reach its perigee at around 7:47pm and will be at its maximum brightness.”

“Shit, I got back just in time. One last switch.”

“One last what?” Fiona asks, her narrowing eyes the picture of suspicion. 

“Nothin?” That was not a very Baz sounding answer.

Fiona agrees. “That’s not something my nephew would say.” Her eyes lock on to me and the strip of bacon dangling from my teeth. “He’s also not nearly so fond of bacon.”

“Right. Dev’s outside. I gotta run!”

“Basilton!” Fiona’s volume has gone from sniper mode to full frontal assault. I can’t help but imagine her holding a machine gun—the shoe definitely fits. “Don’t walk away from me!”

I walk away from her. “Sorry, dude, got a lot of shit on my plate right now.”

“Who are you and what have you done with my nephew?” It sounds like a canned line, but context is everything.

“I promise I’ll explain when I figure out how to stop that comet from falling from the sky.” If I can just get my feet in these fucking shoes—who the fuck needs this many laces?

“What!” I should be pleased I managed to imbue Fiona with that much surprise, but, given the circumstances, my mind simply does not have the time.

“Yeah,” I say, and decide in this moment that, like Fiona, I have very few fucks left to give. “Tonight, the comet’s gonna fall on Sandside.”

If the goal was to stop words from coming out of her mouth, this does the trick.

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out. I came a long way to make this right. Not gonna half arse it.”

It is time to fly, and I’m halfway down the steps when I hear her shouting from the doorframe. “You and I are going to sit down tonight, whoever you are, and you’re going to explain to me exactly what’s been going on!”

I wave at her in my best imitation of the queen.

Niall welcomes me with a grin that is almost full Cheshire cat in its breadth. His whole face is alive with something wonderful and (by the looks of it) secret.

“Back seat, Pitch,” Dev says.

I’m barely in the car before Dev is prodding. “What did you do to your aunt?” I look over my shoulder and see Fiona on the front porch, arms waving in the sunshine.

“Told her the truth,” I say. “Same as I’m gonna do to you two sods, so listen up.”

Dev pulls out onto the road and I roll down the window and just watch the town pass me by. It’s such a relief to just…see it. Not as it was: a collection of rubble and the sad looks of the stray survivor. As it should be. Like this.

I swallow hard and look up at my friends. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” Dev says as Niall answers, “Definitely.”

Good lads, these two.

“Okay. This is going to sound like some next level crazy shit—”

“—You really sound like a different person some days, Baz—”

“—But the comet is going to fall from the sky tonight.”

“What do you mean, it’s going to fall from the sky?”

“Literally. Exactly what I just said.”

“But—” Niall’s smile softens. “How?”

“It’s gonna split. No one’s predicting it, but I swear it’s gonna break apart and a huge meteor is gonna hit the town.”

“Holy fuck,” Dev says.

“Holy fuck is exactly the reaction I’m looking for,” I say, feeling the hope in my chest become a bit more sturdy.

“You’re not joking are you.”

“Nope. Honestly, I wish I were.”

“Okay,” Dev says, his voice shaky, but not with disbelief. “So…what do we do?”

“Well, you drive us to Spar.”

“Uh, if a comet’s gonna wipe out the town, why do we need to stop at  Spar ?” Niall’s trying to gussy up his tone into something polite, but it’s not working too well.

“Snacks,” I say as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We’ve got some plotting to do. I’m gonna need to eat.”

Dev’s laughter fills the interior and cuts the tension into ribbons. “I guess you’re kinda right,” he says and flicks on his blinker.

…

Maybe it’s cause I bounced between homes like a fucking pin ball, but seeing the persistence of houses like Baz’s and Dev’s makes my chest feel tight. As he turns into the lane—because of course a single home has its own lane—and the buildings come into view, I can’t help but stare. The permanency of a place like this, a place that has stood in the same spot for hundreds of years and has housed generations of the same family, a giant fucking tree, whose rings are the faces of the Grimms and the Pitches and all the other old families, stretching back into histories not even they remember. The age of the old families is embedded in these places. 

And they’re all about to go up in flames. 

“Probably best not to do this in the house,” Dev says as he pulls in behind a shiny looking car that I don’t know the name of but that looks like it would treat the motorway like a landing strip. “Pretty sure mum’s home and you’re sounding a bit alarmist.”

I don’t bother to argue.

“Let’s head to the shed.”

In my world of group homes and sagging flats, a shed usually consisted of a tiny slice of outdoor space with a few stray tools or a lawn mower stuffed inside. An outdoor closet of questionable cleanliness.

As I follow Dev’s sloping gait in through the door of a building away from the Manor proper however— “Holy shit.” I know that I’ve been an utter failure in my Baz imitations today, but seeing a comet crashing to earth has kinda put my priorities into perspective. “Dev, this room…”

“If you’re gonna give me shit about the mess, that would make you the most ungrateful prat in the history of ungrateful prats—”

“No, it’s bloody brilliant!” I say. “It’s basically a fucking lair!”

And it is. Metal shelving stretches from floor to ceiling, and is stuffed full with old monitors, chords, a mess of gaming systems stretching back into the early 90s. Maps and weird plush toys with giant eyes, empty crisp bags and the weird green internals of a computer.

There is definitely a cork board on one of the walls with different newspaper articles about strange crop formations.

_ I’m getting a glimpse of Dev’s internals. _

I notice a boombox sitting under the table that seems to double as his desk and wonder if there’s a story there—if Dev held the thing high above his head while Marvin Gaye blared through the speakers in an effort to woo a spurned lover.

“Hey, Niall, you mind running inside and grabbing a couple glasses of water?”

Niall looks at the two bulging plastic grocery bags—I’d commandeered the purchase of our daily sustenance and had insisted on literally one of everything—which included three bottles of water. “Uh, okay?”

“It’s just…” Dev is blushing. Niall is blushing. Why are they both getting so worked up over water bottles? “I like the way the Grimm well water tastes, is all. It’s quite a nice vintage?”

“Right,” Niall says, looking at Dev (who seems fixated on the intricacies of his shoelaces) and then at me and my, now open, bottle of water. “I’ll be right back with the…uh…Grimm vintage well water.”

The door has barely closed behind him when Dev rounds on me.

“This is your fault!” If I thought he was red before.

“What’s my fault?” Definitely not what Baz would’ve said.

“You keep saying this shit. About me and Niall and…”

The mathematics of this morning are starting to add up. “And…” I ask, giving him what I hope is an encouraging elbow.

“And I kissed him!” Dev says, hands gesticulating like one of those inflatable tube guys who flail outside of petrol stations or shopping outlet.

“You did not!”

“I did!”

“And!?” The grin on my face is decimating an attempt at subtly, but I don’t care.

“And he…” Dev’s suddenly lost his ability to speak. I have never related with him more.

“Did he kiss you back?”

“I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so? You either know or you don’t.”

“He kissed me back!” Dev wails, almost taking me out with one of his wild gestures. The wild throes of a desperate love.

“So,” I say, trying to temper my excitement. Something is clearly wrong. “What’s the problem?”

“Well,” Dev says, leaning back in the plastic folding chair that is protesting quite loudly under his weight. “I…I kinda freaked out after?”

“What do you mean, ‘freaked out?’”

“Uh…” Dev looks up at me, his face a grotesque combination of humour and panic. “I said something along the lines of, ‘Well, now I know what it’s like to kiss a dude.’”

“Why would you say that!?”

“I don’t know! I panicked! He’s my best mate. What if it goes wrong somehow!?”

“Then it goes wrong! And you can say that you gave it a shot.”

“But like…” The sound that Dev makes is perhaps the most aggressive sigh I’ve ever heard—a rhinoceros would be perturbed. “He’s the most important person in my life, and all I could think…well, after how fucking hot that was…”

“I feel like you’re making my points—”

“—Was that I’m gonna fuck this up. And then I’m going to lose him. And Baz. I just…” Dev pauses and sits in his despair for a moment. “I can’t lose him.”

It’s a tender moment that I have no idea how to field. I’ve never been good with words, and a shrug doesn’t seem appropriate here, so I shift closer to Dev, who’s staring at his shoelaces again, and pull him into a side-hug.

It’s an awkward thing, where he stiffens up like a statue, but I just power through, until he kinda melts into me.

“Not used to you hugging me, Baz. You’re really fucking weird today, you know that?”

I’m not really listening. “I can’t believe you got your kiss before I did,” I mumble under my breath. Thinking, again, for the thousandth, millionth time about Baz, looking at me like he was going to attack. Grey eyes asking me a question I should’ve answered with my mouth on his.

“What do you mean—”

“I’ve got your water, you fucking aristocrat.” Niall walks in and nearly drops the two crystal glasses on the floor. “Are you two…hugging it out?”

“I’ll explain later,” I say, jumping up to take one of the cups from Niall’s hand. “We’ve got some serious plotting to do. And I have a few ideas.”

…

The shed-lair is a graveyard of highly processed food, the carcasses of chocolate bar wrappers, single pasties, and stray Wotsits all over the floor.

“So,” I say, taking a deep breath in and readying my words. “The early warning system is kinda the hinge for the whole plan.”

“I can’t believe you thought of that,” Niall says, fixing me with a suspicious gaze for the hundredth time today. “It’s a bit more anarchist than I’m used to seeing in you, Baz.”

I shrug at him, for the hundred and first time today. “There’s speakers all over town, yeah?”

“And it won’t be too hard to hack into the town’s early warning system. A start-up frequency should be able to do it pretty easily.”

“Which is why we need the bomb.” 

“A fucking bomb,” Niall says, shaking his shaggy red head. “I still can’t believe we’re blowing something up.”

“Yeah, we have water gel explosives that we use for construction at our storage site,” Dev says, rather pleased with the prospect of stealing highly dangerous materials from his father's construction site. “If we knock out the power for the entire town…well.” Dev’s face is twisted into something wicked and Niall is looking at him with open suspicion. “That’ll get their attention.”

“Sooooo,” Naill says, letting his vowels stretch. “We’re blowing up the power station, knocking out electricity in the entire town and then—”

“Hijacking the town’s warning system,” I say.

“So, we can broadcast an evacuation warning to the whole town right from school,” Dev adds, stringing his sentence seamlessly into mine.

Niall doesn’t bother to argue—just covers his face in his hands.

“Look!” I punch my finger into the map I’ve got spread across the table. “We’re outside the disaster area here.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just…” I’ve been teetering on the edge of confession all morning. The image of the school standing on the precipice of a town that no longer exists sits like a stone in my stomach. “Can we just write it off to weird Pitch magic shit and call it a day?”

“Yes,” Niall says, and Dev is nodding along with him. “We…uh…we trust you, Baz.”

Good fucking men.

“So,” I say, trying to clear the feelings from my throat. “We’ll just make an announcement to evacuate to the school.”

“I know that this can probably be left unsaid,” Niall says. “But all of this is totally a crime.”

“Don’t worry!” I say with a bit too much enthusiasm. “By nightfall, most of the town’ll be rubble anyways. One power station’s gonna feel like nothing in a few hours.”

“Was that supposed to make me feel better?” Niall says.

I ignore him. “You’ll be in charge of the broadcast.” 

“Why me!”

“Cause you’ve got a nice voice,” Dev says, and Niall nearly falls out of his seat.  _ These two really should’ve been snogging ages ago. _

“And I’ll be in charge of the explosives,” Dev says with a bit too much enthusiasm. 

“While I go have a word with the mayor,” I say, with a lot less enthusiasm than Dev.

“Why meet up with daddy Grimm?”

“Could you  _ not _ say those two words in sequence?” Niall says, the colour of a honey crisp apple.

Dev looks like he wants to take a bite.

“Because!” I say, interrupting what promises to be some very awkward flirting. “If the evacuation order isn’t coming from town hall, no one’s gonna go anywhere. But if I talk to the mayor, as his son, I can convince him.”

“Well, it’s a plan,” Niall says.

“A good one!” Dev compensates for Niall’s lack of enthusiasm.

“It’s up to us to save everyone,” I say, feeling something like hope creeping into the despair that’s been suffocating everything in visions of death and destructions. “No pressure, guys.”

…

The afternoon is baking the town with the heat of midday when I step out of Baz’s Jag in front of the parliament buildings, but it’s a cold sweat that’s dripping down my forehead.

_ Fuck, I’m nervous.  _ I try to scrape together some confidence; there should be some in here. Baz is made of conviction.

“Hi, Basil!” A woman with soft blonde hair waves me in her direction. “Can I help you with anything?”

In my experience, it’s best to just roll with these things. Don’t turn down food, don’t turn down help (I’m fairly sure there’s a children’s advert that disagrees with these life hacks, but it definitely didn’t account for rogue comets and apocalyptic scenarios).

“I’m looking for Mal—my father,” I say, and it is in this precise moment that I wish I understood more about the complicated relationship that Baz has with his dad.

“Great timing, Basil. He just finished with a client.”

“So, he’s not in with anyone?” Would Baz barge in, throwing the doors open, social conventions be damned?

Highly unlikely.

“That’s lucky,” I say instead. “I’ll just…head on in then?”

“Yes dear. And let me know if you need anything.”

I’m thinking about how lovely that woman is when my eyes catch on the nameplate.

Malcolm Grimm. I know that it was Grimm-Pitch and, for that half second while I stand scraping together my courage, I wonder if he cast the extra last name out of grief or cowardice.

And then I decide it doesn’t matter, because he still abandoned the boy whose skin I’m wearing and who I plan to woo as soon as all immediate crises are managed, and that is where I find my courage—in the way that Baz’s eyes go hollow when talks about losing his mum.

“Come in,” he says, and I’m surprised by how soft his voice is, how it fails to filter out of the room.

Courage. I have it. I push past the nameplate and step into the office.

“Hello, uh, dad.” Fuck, I’m sweating my dread out through Baz’s fancy shirt. I’ve never really had a heart-to-heart with a father figure before—this territory is horrifically uncharted.

I’ve stalled in the entranceway. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

His desk is enormous (compensating?), the kind of sprawling creature you’d see guarding a hoard of treasure. For a moment, Malcolm Grimm looks like a mob boss, hiding away behind stacks of money and a few thuggish no-names. The chair is one of those adjustable puffs of leather and shine, and he’s got his propped up, just a bit higher than the smaller simpler chair stationed across from him (definitely compensating).

“Naw, that’s alright. I’ll stand. You know,” I rub at my arms. “If it’s all the same to you.”

I can see Baz in the man before me. The widow’s peak is his. So are the eyes. But it’s a cheap imitation, a man who’s lost his lustre, who’s watched the world move on and just let it pass him by. He’s a communion wafer, whereas Baz is fucking biblical. 

“What do you want?”

Direct. Well, that I can work with.

“The comet that’s been in the sky this whole week, you know it?”

“It’s been in the sky all week, Basil.”

“Right.” His features are tight with skepticism. This is a man who proceeds with caution, who takes measured steps, not impulsive ones.  _ Fuck.  _ “Well, it’s gonna split.”

“Split?”

“In two.”

“Yes, that’s generally what people mean when they say split.”

I want to tell him that this is urgent, this is life or death, that this is not the time for fucking semantics. But some of Baz’s restraint softens my tongue. “Well, it’s going to. And a huge piece is gonna hit the town.”

Malcolm Grimm opens his mouth and then closes it again. I believe I’ve left him speechless.

“Everyone’s gonna die if you don’t evacuate.”

There his mouth goes again. Opening and closing.

“So…uh…yeah. You gonna do anything about that?” I know it’s not the most elegant delivery, but all of the essential information is there.

“Are you…” Malcolm leans forward onto his elbows, looking me straight in the eye. “Are you trying to punish me?”

“Punish you?”

“For showing an interest in your future?”

“Well, that’s not really what you were doing,” I say, remembering the way Baz had talked about pressures and privacy. I’d thought the idea a bit audacious. If someone left me after my mum died, that idea that he would have any say in my life choice seemed presumptuous at best. “You were mostly sticking your nose back into his-I mean, my life, when it suited you. But, that’s not what this is about.”

For once, I think I’ve said a few too many words.

“What did you just say to me?”

“The point is!” I say, trying to get this conversation back on track. “That the comet is going to fall on Sandside tonight. And you can either believe me and do something about it, or you can ignore my crystal fucking clear warning and do nothing.”

Silence. So much silence.

“No.”

“What?”

“I said.” He leans in closer somehow. “No. I will not play into whatever childish fantasy or ill-conceived plot for revenge you and your goddamn aunt have cooked up. It’s a re-election year. She knows it. She wants to see me made a fool.”

“That’s really not it—”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

“Uh…” Well, that’s a difficult question. “Considering that you’re looking an early warning for a fucking disaster straight in the mouth and making it about yourself?”  _ Oh good god, I should’ve left some of that courage at home.  _ “Pretty fucking stupid.”

“How dare you?”

“I can answer that if you want me to.”

“How dare you come in here, and spout such obvious nonsense.”

“I saw it!”

“Oh.” He’s laughing now. It’s an ugly thing. “You saw it? Does this have anything to do with the mighty  _ House of Pitch _ ?”

“Uh, actually yeah?”

“Oh, Basilton. You are so bright. How can you be so singularly blind?”

“But I’m not...” There are no words to be had, edgewise or otherwise. "Magic—"

“Magic?” It’s rotten." The words are soggy and dripping with disdain. “Time and fire and lies. There’s no such thing as chosen ones, Basil, and there are no worlds to be saved!”

“I’m not—”

For the first time in my life, I wish that I had an ocean of raw power sitting in my chest, ready to go off. This is a man I would gladly show the devastating potential of what magic can do. Nonbelievers be fucking damned.

“I tolerated this borderline religious fervour with Natasha because I lov- because she was my wife and I had no idea how deeply the obsession ran. I hoped that it would die with the next generation. That you would leave it behind!”

There’s spit hanging from his lips and I can see the house he’s made with his hands starting to crumble. “The only person,” I finally say, once it’s clear he’s going to let me get a word in, “who left anything behind was you.”

And I make a dramatic fucking exit because, sometimes, social conventions can take the day off.

The door flies open, crashing into the wall behind it with such force that I hear something metal clatter to the floor—that fucking nameplate.  _ He’s not a Pitch or a Grimm,  _ I think _. He’s just a sad little man.  _ “Basilton?” That soft face, peeks up at me around her monitor, looking more than a little bit anxious. “Are you alright?”

“I’m…” I feel all of the anger rising like bile—fucking bile—but it’s not meant for her. “I’m fine. Thanks though. I…” I scramble, trying to pick up the nameplate, but it falls apart in my hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Just leave it, dear.”

“Right. Bye then!” I do my best to keep storming out of the front doors of the  town hall with, for Baz’s sake, all of the poise I can muster.

By the time I’m in the front seat, mashing the keys into the ignition, the drama of a quick exit is quickly wearing off and the reality of our situation is quickly setting in.

Baz (4:43 pm): I fucked up

_ Niall (4:44 pm): what happened??? _

**Dev (4:44 pm): how did daddy grimm take it??**

_ Niall (4:45 pm): I fucking told you to stop _

**Dev (4:45 pm): and that was your first mistake**

Baz (4:46 pm): guys focus. end of the world level shit going down

_ Niall (4:46 pm): Right, sorry Baz. _

**Dev (4:47pm): what did he say?**

Baz (4:47 pm): he lost his shit

Baz (4:47 pm): i think he thinks fiona wants to emabarss him and this is some giant plot?

**Dev (4:48 pm): thats some next level bullshit**

_ Niall (4:48 pm): I’m so sorry. Are you okay? _

Baz (4:49 pm): i just…i dont know what to do

**Dev (4:49 pm): we keep the plan the same and just hope people evacuate**

Baz (4:50 pm): but what if they dont?

**Dev (4:50 pm): we did everything we could**

_ Niall (4:51 pm): we’re with you Baz. Until the end. _

The screen starts to swim, consonants blurring and vowels seeking greener pastures and I’m confused at first. Until tears splash across the screen—giant tears, as if they’re trying to capture all off of my desperation, my grief and my dreams in single expression. Emotion overflowing, sized up to scale.

_ Baz could’ve done it, _ I think, as the tears continue to fall.  _ If he were here, he’d’ve known what to do. _

_ If he were here… _

Wait. _Wait_. Maybe he is here. 

My thoughts start to catch up, as I look up off into the distance. To the threshold where the world of Sandside disappears into the sea.  _ That’s where I left my body. What if… _

Baz (4:57 pm): plans still a go

Baz (4:57 pm): meet you at the station just after the sun goes down

His fire flickering inside my chest, I turn the car on and wrench it into gear. If I’m here, then he’s gotta be up there. And I didn’t come all this way for nothing.

**Baz, before the comet fell**

_ Dev is behind the wheel of a Lexus, churning the road into a storm of angry dust clouds. I hadn’t wanted to ask him for a ride, but I also hadn’t wanted to take a Bus replacement service. I’m trying to exude vibes of impenetrability and turtle shells. _

_ Which is why Dev immediately asks, “Are you going to tell me where you’re going?” _

_ “No.” _

_ Dev slams on the breaks, and I go rushing forward into the embrace of my seatbelt. _

_ “Devereaux, what the actual fuck—” _

_ “I’m done being patient.” _

_ “Where’s this coming from?” I really need him to leave me alone. Just this once.  _

_ “You’ve been so fucking weird lately. And like, I’m willing to give you a lot of slack, Baz. Cause I know you and I know how you get sometimes. But this…” Dev almost falters, but his goodness won’t let him stop before he’s delivered to me every good intention available. “This has gone on too long. I’m…I’m worried about you. So like…tell me. Something. Anything!” _

_ “I’m going to London,” I say, unsure, even as the words leave my mouth, of what I’m going to say next. _

_ “What? Why?” _

_ “No reason—” _

_ “Baz, I swear to Christ I’m not moving this fucking car until you talk to me.” _

_ “I…I’ve met someone.” It feels like a concession. A white flag on the field of my dignity. Admitting that you love someone is no easy task. _

_ “Why didn’t you just say so?” _

_ “He’s…well, he.” _

_ “You think I care about that?” _

_ “I didn’t know.” _

_ “Well, now you do. All I care about is how you’ve been lately. Different. Not bad. Just…just different. And now I think I get why.” _

_ “One date and you think the world’s upside-down.” _

_ Dev ignores me. “You’re in love, aren’t you?” _

_ “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” _

_ He puts the Lexus back in gear and pulls back out onto the road. “Thanks Baz. For letting go a little.” _

_ “Please don’t add unnecessary sentiment to a conversation that is already making me deeply uncomfortable.” _

_ “You really like him, hey?” _

_ “I can’t believe I thought telling you was a good idea.” _

**Simon, as Baz**

The sun is starting to set when I hit the motorway. There’s something alive inside of me. It’s urgent and needy and…growing. The match set the flame and now…the poor transmission in this fancy car is suffering the effects. I rev the motor and watch the needle climb into red.

One realization and the whole world is upside-down.

I’m going to find him.

**Baz, before the comet fell**

_My regrets are slow acting. They rise to the surface before I even have a chance to make the mistake. In-progress regret. It plagues me the entire way. Four hours is a long time to sit alone with nothing but your thoughts for company._

_ If I suddenly show up, will it be a nuisance or a surprise? _

_ He might not like it if I do. _

_ By the time I arrive at Euston Station, my regrets have worked my thoughts into a frenzy so furious that I find my fingers dialling his number (of course I memorized and stored his number) (he was a stranger inhabiting my body) (I wanted collateral) (at first) (now I just… _ want _ ). _

_ “The number you are trying to reach is currently outside the cellular network.” _

_ That’s strange. _

_ I guess all that’s left to do is prowl the places I’ve seen him travel. Like the fucking stalker I am. I came all this way. Shame can take a back seat until I’m ready to give up and go home. _

**Simon, as Baz**

Memories are starting to catch, little sparks flying up into the smoke and the wind, the single surge of colour blending into the sunset. I can feel something like possibility shading in.

When I suddenly show up, what will he think? Will he tell me to bugger off and stop messing with his life?

Will he like it? Seeing me?

**Baz, before the comet fell**

_ I wander for hours. _

_ Hours and hours. _

_ I feel like Simon and I can’t help but picture him pacing in an empty carriage late at night, hiding in the underground away from the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune. _

_ I’m not sure what I was expecting today to be. (It wasn’t an erotic grope fest.) I’ve finally settled on a bench on the platform at  _ _ NAME _ _ station, waiting for the next train to take me back to  _ _ Euston _ _. _

_ I suppose it won’t happen—whatever dreams I concocted, whatever fantasies I let shimmer above my head, it’s time to let them go. _

_ It was a long shot right from the start. _

_ And yet. _

_ All of the “what ifs” of my life have somehow merged together. _

_ I see Snow, feet bare and stretched out into the dying foam, sand shuffling between his knobbly toes. _

_ I see him cloaked in stars, holding on to me, showing me the universe like it was nothing. _

_ I wonder, if today had amounted to something more than futility, what would I do? _

_ Would I annoy him? _

_ Would it be awkward? _

_ Or maybe…he’d be glad to see me. I can’t decide if this thought is a question mark or full stop. I suppose that ambiguity sums up today in a crisis of punctuation. _

_ The train hisses into the station. _

_ I guess we won’t meet. But, there’s one thing I’m certain of. If we see each other, we’ll know right away. _

_ Bodies crush around me. A month ago, the claustrophobia of the London underground would have sent my body into emergency conditions—what Snow would call Going Off. I suppose I have one thing to thank the literal out of body experiences for. I can navigate London public transport with the ease of an urbanite.  _

**Simon, as Baz**

I pull off with a manoeuvre a Nascar driver would’ve found mildly impressive and fly up the lane. The way the steering wheel shudders under my palms tells me I’m going too fast. I’m so far past caring, I could laugh.

_ I’m not sure what I’m expecting this to be _

_ It’s a long shot. Everything with Baz has been a long shot, right from the start. _

My seatbelt grabs me tight across my chest as the bumps attempt to eject me from the vehicle.

_ I’ll definitely annoy him. _

_ It’s gonna be so awkward. _

A month ago, there’s no way I could’ve done this. Navigated these back lanes to nowhere, these paths into the magical land of time travel and dances with the dead. I couldn’t start a car without stalling it. But now…I can travel in this world like it’s my own.

**Baz, before the comet fell**

_ There are a dozen carriages on this train, a hundred passengers, 24 hours of the day he could have chosen, and yet, there, less than two feet from me, is Simon fucking Snow. _

_ Golden hair, not so long this time. Trimmed closer to his scalp and that’s a crime, because the strands don’t have enough length to form a wave, to crest and curl in the way that catches the light just so. _

_ The baggy t-shirt’s the same. Simon seems to have an infinite collection of hand-me-downs (“ _ _ They come from charity shops, you rich pra _ _ t,” he’d said, when I first commented on it). _

_ My first impression will always stand, though. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. _

_ Still lonely, maybe more so in this moment than ever before, but he’s hiding it efficiently. _

_ Also, is he…shorter? _

_ It’s him though, of that there is no doubt. _

_ Well, there’s nothing for it. This is what I came to do. This is why I travelled halfway across the country. _

_ To say _

_ “Simon?” _

**Simon, as Baz**

I park the car in the clearing and throw the driver’s door open. The sun is bobbing up and down on the edge of the sky, riding the water level of the day down into the dark.

It’ll be twilight soon. I need to get back to the town, to find Dev, to save everyone. And for that—

“Baz!”

It’s gobbled up by the green.

My feet scrape for purchase as I dash off towards the edge of the world, calling his name.

“Baz!”

**Baz, before the comet fell**

_ “Simon?” _

_ He's looking at me like a stranger. “Uh, sorry. Who’re you?” _

_This is the type of miscalculation that sinks a thousand ships. The kind oversight that allows a horse of suspicious origins into your heart. The colossal kind of fuck up that will unravel every chamber and ventricle, every last red thread come undone._

_ But it’s Simon. _

_ It’s Simon and he’s looking at me like I’m a stranger. _

_The whole world is compressing, folding in on itself, until all that’s left is this overwhelming tightness in my chest that feels impossible to bear any longer and yet I’m still feeling it. Second_ _after second and I’m trapped in a tiny tube of metal and electromagnets, underneath a thousand years of city._

_ I might be able to fade into the walls if he would stop staring. Simon Snow is staring at me and there is not a hint of recognition in those plain blue eyes and I think that that’s what’s going to kill me. _

Let me melt back into the primordial ooze, Simon.

_ I thought out all of the worst case scenarios. Rejection in a phrase: “What are you doing here? Why would I ever want you to come?” _

_ I imagined unkindness (even though I know him to be incapable): “I’d never want to see you. I’ve had enough forced interactions to last me a dozen lifetimes.” _

_ I’d thought I’d prepared myself for the worst that could happen. _

_ I was wrong. _

Let my genetics untangle and devolve into a single cell, unable to walk and talk.

_ I hadn’t prepared for this. For the possibility that the dreams may not have been real, that the memories may not have stayed, that whatever I am to him, that it could not be enough. _

_ That he may not know me at all. _

Let embarrassment take me back to the sea. 

**Simon, as Baz**

I don’t see him.

There’s no tall figure on the horizon. No dark-haired hero walking towards me like I’m the last person he expected to see and the only one he wanted.

There’s…nothing.

I hadn’t prepared for this. For the possibility that I could be wrong and this could be the end. That the memories and the overlap and whatever had tied us together through space and time could not be enough.

**Baz, before the comet fell**

_ The train pulls into a station. Which station, I have no idea. But it wouldn’t matter if it was the express route to crowds of holiday shoppers or an angry maternal dragon or Fiona’s singing voice, I’d still hop off. Every second that I have to spend with a Simon Snow who doesn’t know me is more than I can bear. _

_ I shuffle away from those blue eyes, caught in the tide of bodies, tugging him away. Taking all of his lovely lines and pulling him back into the mist. _

_ “Wait!” _

_ I look up. How am I ever going to look away? _

_ “What’s your name?” _

_ I don’t know what makes me do it. I pull the red chord from my hair—I always wear it when the stakes feel high. “It’s Baz,” I say, tossing one end to him. _

_ Somehow. Miraculously. Through a crowd of people pulling us apart. He catches it in his hand. I leave a piece of me with him. Just in case.  _

_ “My name is—” _

**Simon, as Baz**

“Baz!”


	15. Magic Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stars falling from the sky, at the edge of the world, where the sand meets the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, my dear friends, is the scene I wrote the fic for. It's that special scene that you work towards, that you dream of writing, and that you worry you'll never imbue with enough magic. I'm **so** glad that I get to share this with you, on my birthday! <3  
> Happy reading!

**Baz, as Simon**

I wake up in my mother’s tomb.

The turntable is long since played out, the needle left carelessly on vinyl. “ _ That’ll wreck it, y’know, _ ” Fiona used to say.

“ _ Wreck what? _ ” I’d asked.

“ _ Dunno _ ,” she’d answered, as if she’d never really considered it. “ _ Your mum never said. Just used to get real bitchy when I let it sit like that. And you don’t wanna cross your mum. Even as a dead woman. _ ”

Fiona never minced words. Never pretended that mum was anything more or less than what she was: a force of nature, elegant and gritty, and no longer alive.

Mordy would never have left the record naked like that, exposed to the elements and the chance that it could scratch. I push myself to my feet and adjust the arm, nestling it back into its holder, and slip the record back into its cover.

_ Fucking Billy Joel.  _ I’m with Fi on this one. Overplayed trash. But also the most precious trash in the world, because it was hers.

The dust is cloying and it’s only as I’m trying to bat it away that I realize I’m not in my body anymore.

“Merlin and Morganna,” I whisper. “Another switch?”

The air is buzzing but there is no one to answer my question. Not unless the dead have decided to come walking—highly unlikely. I can’t breathe down here. I can’t think.

I need air.

Crawling out of the catacombs has always felt like coming  _ back _ , as if the world down there isn’t a part of the Lake District at all, wouldn’t show up if I looked for it on a map. Everything about the ruins of this place feels like a secret that you find by accident by falling off the edge of the world and just happening to land somewhere solid.

It feels sticking your head up from a long spell underwater, like the  first breath after a coma.

I stumble, forgetting how clumsy Snow’s bumbling body can be, and push myself up the hill. I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe the scratch at the back of my mind, the memory of a terrible thing I can’t quite bring into focus. There is a horror I need to see refuted.

Because there is no way that a star could’ve fallen from the sky.

I need to see. I need—

When I crest the hill that offers an unobstructed view of all of Sandside, I almost don’t know how to process the visual.

I don’t know what to think because I can’t understand what I’m seeing. Because there is no way that the town just…

isn’t there.

The sun is setting on a scene that I do not recognize.

_ The comet. It fell from the sky. I stood there as it fell, reaching for it as if, somehow, that would make it better. Does that mean…did I… _

My mind flinches away from the idea, from the possibility that I could’ve died on the hill that day. That the town I was so desperate to run away from met an end of fire and dust.

_ It can’t be. Not like this. _

It is fitting, I think, that in my darkest moment, I hear his voice. My voice. Same difference.

“Baz!”

A proper fucking chosen one.

**Simon, as Baz**

“Simon!”

He’s barely there, a frequency not quite aligning with this world, but I would know my name in his accent anywhere.

“Baz!” I shout, dashing up to the edge. Because of course that’s where he would be.

The dramatic prat is waiting for me at the edge of the world, where the sand meets the sea.

I can’t see him. I know that, if the laws governing the universe were operating under normal conditions, that he’d be here in front of me. That he is here in front of me. So close, but so far away.

Nothing with Baz has ever been normal, though, and so I don’t question it. I just chase the sound of his voice (my voice) (our voice).

“Simon!”

The sun finally surrenders to the horizon and dips its head under.

“Magic hour,” I whisper, remembering Mr. Minos. Remebering Fiona and her fucking superstitions.  ****

_ Two light. That’s the origin of the word twilight. It’s dusk and dawn, when it’s neither day nor night. When the border between worlds blur and you might encounter something not human. _

_ “My gran calls it magic hour.” _

_ “In this town, I’m not surprised.” _

This place, on the edge of the world, teeters a bit. I feel my knees buckle. My brain feels like it’s boiling as the world slips in and out of focus.  _ Magic,  _ I think.

“Magic hour,” Baz says, and when I turn, I see him.

Him. In his own body.  _ Magic, making us whole again. One final switch. _

Him, with long dark hair.  _ I need him closer.  _

Him, with cheekbones casting elegant lines that I want to trace with my fingertips.  _ Fucking hell. _

There’s something easy in the lines of his face. Something dreamy and beautiful. His downturned chin tilts up, and I look into those grey eyes for the first time and for the hundredth time.

_ Holy shit. _

His guard is down. And it stays that way.

_ Let me keep him. Please let me keep him. _

**Baz**

Simon Snow is standing in front of me. Not as a dream. Not as a reflection. He’s here and his hair is a mess and he’s grinning just for me.

I’m going to kiss him. He’s so alive and, somehow, so am I.

He shakes his head and he’s saying something, and I know that I’ll kiss him.

Because I’ve never kissed anyone before, and I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone but him.

**Simon**

The purple is panoramic, the clouds a mixed medium. We are knee deep in the loveliest impasse, with tragedy standing behind us and the threat of violence standing in front. But for now… 

“Baz,” I say, because fuck waiting and fuck dancing and fuck this. “Come here.”

The greys in his eyes flicker orange in the twilight— _ a boy with fire on the inside _ —and I think he might be nervous.

Still, he takes the two steps that close the distance.

I grab him by his collar (I can’t wait) and pull him the rest of the way. Three inches collapse in an instant. “I have to give you something first. Keep a promise.”

“Wha—”

I cut him off with a kiss on the top of his head. It’s chaste and gentle and I hope I did her justice.

“Snow?” he says, his voice a thick smoke.  _ Fire on the inside. _

“I’ll explain later. But I’m not waiting another second.”

“I don’t—”

His mouth is still asking a question when I kiss it.

It all feels soft at first, his lips confused and caught off balance. The shadow of a second passes where I’m sure I’ve made a grave mistake, that he’s going to throw me off down the hill and lecture me about pouncing on unsuspecting strangers.

But then his mouth relaxes into mine and I can feel how much he wants this.

I can feel it in the desperate breath that stutters out when I bring one of my hands up to his chin. I can feel it in the way he crashes into me, single-minded and desperate.  _ Baz out of control is doing something to me. _ And then again, when I part his lips with my tongue and he whimpers.  _ Oh, that sound. _

His guard is down and his lips are moving against mine and I can’t help but to think,

_ I was right. _

He  _ was _ going to kiss me.

I let my thumb trace the line of his jaw—that place where his tension hides. Because I want to. Because I can. 

I think that there’s magic in this. Maybe not the kind that leaves craters in its wake or unwinds the threads of time. But a simpler kind. Maybe the only magic left in a world that’s moved on.

There’s magic in his lips.

There’s magic in the tears running down his cheeks.

There’s magic in the way that he’s holding me: like he needs me, like he wants me, like he’ll never let me go.

**Baz**

His tongue in my mouth will force a thousand confessions.

His hands in my hair will bring the world to bear.

There is no more time to secretly want or to quietly want or to desperately, violently, singularly want. He’s willing to split this bloody infinitive—to want. Only to want—and I’m not sure I’ll survive it. I could die kissing Simon Snow, and that would be alright.

He’s breathing into me and all I can think is  _ I’m alive and so are you and we are breathing the same air. _

He wants me.

He wants this.

He wants it all.

And I’m going to give it to him.

**Simon**

I would pour my heart into a comet.

**Baz**

I would revise the pages of history.

**Simon**

I would take the threads of time in my bare hands.

**Baz**

I would cross the country to see you.

**Simon**

I would teach your car to fly.

**Baz**

I would travel through the city’s intestines.

I would do it for you, Simon.

**Simon**

I pull away to see if he will reach for me.

He does.

His breathing is heavy and the look in his eyes is singular and focused, and when he closes the distance, I think that I’ve never been kissed like this before. Like he wants to cover every broken part of me with his mouth. 

Like he’ll have every inch of me and nothing less.

**Baz**

I’d cross every line.

If the comet is going to fall from the sky, this is how I would choose to go. I would die kissing Simon Snow.

**Simon**

The clouds look like dust, kicked up and rioting. Purples are a smudge on the cheeks of the horizon as the half-light starts to burn, explosions of orange and deeper orange.

I don’t know how long I kiss him. Just that, when he pulls away, it makes me ache.

“How,” he says, leaning into me, his fingers buried in my shirt with the white knuckled fear of someone worried he’s going to lose something. “How did you get here? How?”

“I uh…” I rub the back of my neck. “It’s a really long story, actually. And I’m…”  _ Fuck, how did I let this happen? _ “I’m not sure we have time. I think you might disappear once twilight fades.”

“How long does it usually last?”

“It’s not really a fixed thing. Minutes though. Not much longer than that.”

Things are starting to make sense. Memories of moments when he seemed to cross over. The first time I tried to drive, the way I’d been sure it was his hand on mine. And then again when I knew, somehow impossibly, that my magic was about to go off. I didn’t know how or why. But I could feel him. I knew that he needed me.

All at twilight. Magic hour.

“I…uh…” Where to start? “I met your mum. She was nice. So nice.”

His lips are a hard line and I see the old wound twist. I keep talking. “She helped me figure out how to…help unwind time.”

“What! How—”

“Minutes, Baz. We’ve got minutes.”

“Right.” Watching Baz attempt to leash his curiosity makes me want to kiss him again.

_ Fuck, I’m could spend the rest of my life kissing him. _ I run my tongue against the backs of my teeth and try to hold on to the memory of his lips. _ I’ve never been kissed like that before. I’ve never felt so wanted. _

“The meteor is going to fall.”

He nods. “I saw it.”

“Thank christ for that. I thought I’d have to convince you.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just shudders.

“There’s a lot to do,” I say, filling the dying minutes of our time together with productive words. Words I hope will save his life. “Dev and Niall have been helping.”

“Good men.”

“Everyone needs to be out of the blast radius, when that happens. We’re blowing up the electric station—”

“You’re what!”

“Focus, Baz.” It’s so strange to be calling the shots.

“But that’s very clearly a crime!”

“A meteor is crashing to earth tonight. No matter what happens, there isn’t going to be a town that needs electricity after this.”

There’s grief on his face then—it’s confused and pained. He leashes that too.

“Power’ll go out and we’re gonna hack into the town’s early warning system.”

“Finally good for something,” Baz grumbles.

“And Niall’s gonna tap into it using equipment at the high school.”

“How?”

I shrug. “I honestly have no idea. Dev figured all that shit out.”

Baz nods. “And me?”

I kick a stone over the edge and watch it tumble. “Well. I kinda…fucked up with your dad today.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a long story, but I might’ve told him to go fuck himself.”

Baz opens his mouth, closes it, and then glares at me. “I want you to know that, if we had more time, you would resemble a frog in a dissection kit and not a criminally handsome chosen one.”

“You think I’m criminally handsome?”

“Not the point, Snow.”

“Simon.”

“Is now really the time ?”

“Yeah. Cause I like the way it sounds. I like…I like it when you say my name, Baz. My real one.”

His face is a mess of frustration and desire and something fond.

“Simon,” he says, “what do you need me to do?”

“Go to your dad. Convince him to help us evacuate. Make sure he doesn’t try to fuck with it when he realizes the message isn’t coming from town hall. I couldn’t do it. I thought I could. I tried. But you…” I swallow, and I feel his eyes on my throat. “You can do anything.”

“He’s not the easiest man to reach,” Baz says and I know that this is a wound older than a day of reckoning.

“OH! SHIT!”

“What—”

“Fuckity fuck fuck!”

“Snow. Words. Use them.”

“Your mum. When I saw her, she gave me a message. Told me that you’d need it.”

“A message from my mother?”

“She said…” I cast my mind back to the strangest dance of my life, trying to make sure I get it right. “That when your dad proposed, he was up to his knees in the ocean. And that she told him…that she would ‘hang the moon for his pleasure.’”

“That’s very specific,” Baz says, but I see the way his eyes sharpen.

“It sounds like it was a secret. So…maybe she knew?”

“Knew what?”

And he says I’m the thick one. “That you would need to convince him. That he…might not believe. In magic. In you.”

“Well,” Baz says, staring past me into the sky. “No pressure?”

It’s suddenly too much. The nerves and magic. Saving this one town feels like saving the whole world because…well it’s got the one person in it who feels like the whole world to me. I can’t help it. The laughter starts bubbling out.

“What’s the matter with you?” Baz says, but he’s grinning too.

“It’s just,” I snort. “It’s just so ridiculous. I feel like,” more laughter. “Like I’m in a fucking storybook.”

“You cast me as the villain and yourself as the hero,” Baz says, but he’s laughing too. “Would you like to update the characterization?”

I look him dead in the face, and say, “No.”

“Si—”

“I’ve got a thing for villains.”

And then I take him by the back of his neck.

**Baz**

I’m still going to die kissing Simon Snow. But not today. Not if I can help it.

“Are you sure there’s nothing left to tell me?” I ask against his lips.

“OH! Oh oh oh! You came to see me!” He’s shouting, filled to the brim with life and light, and, all of a sudden, I can’t meet his eyes.

“I didn’t know you then!” he blusters at me. “Our times got tangled somehow. When you came to see me, I hadn’t met you yet. God, that’s confusing. I barely remembered until today.”

“Of course,” I whisper.  _ It’s not that he didn’t want me; he just didn’t know me yet.  _

“You gave me this.” My eyes land on his wrist and I see it. Worn and faded, but unmistakably—

“Mine,” I breathe. “My mother’s red cord. You kept it?”

There’s a finger beneath my chin, tipping me into a pool of simple blue eyes and I’m drowning. “Of course I did. Here.” Stubby fingers untangle the red thread and fumbles at my wrist. “I’d tie it in your hair, but I’m worried I’ll fuck it up.” So he wraps it around my wrist again.  _ Simon Snow wrapped my mother’s cord around my wrist and called it,  _ “It’s like destiny,” he says.

“Oh.” The intimacy of the moment feels breakable. As if it will shatter at one wrong move, one misplaced word—

“Shit!” Simon pulls away and starts fumbling through his pockets. The colour palate of the sky is closing its eyes, as grey starts to settle into a deepening ombre—a reminder that we are almost out of time.

“What’s wrong?” I can’t stop tracing the lines of that simple red string. 

“When this is over,” he says, retrieving a felt tipped pen from the depths of his pack and pulling the lid off with his teeth, “I’m worried we’ll forget each other.”

“I won’t,” I say. Simon Snow is many things. Forgettable is not one of them.

“You say that, but Baz…I forget you. I lost the memories. Whatever magic brought us together…it fades.”

“Perhaps for chosen ones with the IQ of a nine toed troll.”

“Fuck off, I’m serious. And like…” He pauses, really thinking about something. “I don’t think having one less toe would really affect a troll’s IQ.”

I don’t have the energy (or the time) to explain how he’s missing the point. “What do you want, then, Snow?” I want to pull the sky down around us and wrap him in it. I want to dance with him, I want our feet to balance atop the impossible and not fall in, I want to sway with him, in every timeline and every dream.

_ I want all of those things and I don’t know how to tell him. _

“Let’s write down our names,” he says, taking my hand in his and starting to scribble. The contact still makes me shiver.  _ It’s real. He’s real.  _ “So we don’t forget each other when this is done.” He finishes with my palm and hands me the pen.

“This is ridiculous,” I say, looking up into those blue eyes, but I cannot resist him. I never could.

I press the felt to his palm and manage a single vertical line before he disappears.

**Simon**

“Wha—” The pen clatters to the ground

My hand is still outstretched, waiting for him to come back. The warm half-light has faded from the world and that last piece of magic that brought us together fades with it.

The hillside is holding its breath, a cassette tape playing nothing but silence, the last moments after a record has run out of music. “Wait!” I yell anyway, because I wasn’t ready for him to go.

I look down at my hand, stare at the place where he’d started to write, and trace that single line with the tip of my finger. “I wanted to tell you, I should’ve told you, that wherever you are, I swear that I’ll find you again. No matter what.”

There’s still no air. The lungs of the world refuse to expand. Or maybe that’s just me

“It’s okay,” I say, just in case he can hear me. “I won’t forget. Your name is…”

_ Fuck. _

“Your name. It’s…”

I fall to my knees, scrambling for the pen, for something to write down the detail I need, to make physical some piece of this night.

The ocean is coming and I’m nothing but sand. I can’t hold it. I can’t…

“Your name…”

My fingers catch on something smooth and I press the uncapped pen to my palm. “Your name…is…” Shaking hands make for shaking pens, but neither can capture memories in a bottle.

“No.” They’re going. Not just the little things—as if a name could ever be little. “Who are you?” He was the pin holding this tenuous marionette of magic and memories together, and now he’s gone and it’s all falling to pieces.

“Why did…” I look around. “What did I even come here for?”  _ No. _

I came all this way to see him.

I came to save him.

I wanted him to be alive.

Who was it again?

Who?

Who did I come to see?

Someone important.

Someone I don’t want to forget.

Someone I shouldn’t.

Who was it?

Who was it?

Who?

Who?

“What’s your name!”


	16. Nothing More and Nothing Less Than a Beautiful View

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be gay. Do crimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter (and an epilogue) to be had. Thank you for reading this strange not-so-little fic with me. I'm filled with love.

**Baz**

I’m in motion as soon as the marker disappears from my hand. _It’s alright,_ I think. _I won’t forget him. I’ll never forget Simon Snow._

The comet is striking a pose, lighting up the night as dark blue rolls in.

_Simon._

Fear pulses through me and the stakes are painted in the stars. _Simon, you had better not have brought Mordelia’s bike this time—_

When I see the smooth lines of the Jag, I could weep. He left the keys in the ignition. _Thank you, Simon, for, just this once, using good sense. Or just forgetting the keys in the car. Either way._

I launch myself into the front seat, turn the key over, and throw the Jag into reverse. Details flit, the ones and zeros in my mind lighting up, cataloguing. _The power station._ He said the power station. Dev’s gonna blow it up.

_Simon Snow. His name is Simon._

Aleister fucking Crowley, we’re going to blow up public property. Summer air stings my cheeks and throws my hair into distress, black whipping around my face in a properly dramatic fashion.

_Your name is Simon._

HumDrum11 is bright overhead—so stunning even now, after I know what it will bring—that it makes it hard to breathe. It hasn’t split. Not yet. We’ve got time.

The motorway lists left and right and all that’s left is to follow Simon’s plan to its conclusion and hope…hope that it’s enough.

_Simon._

I breathe in the chill.

_It’s Simon_

Remember the heat of his skin.

_Simon Snow_

Savour his lips.

_The most ridiculous name in the whole world_

He kissed me like I was the last person alive.

_Simon Snow. I won’t ever forget._

Metal bars rise poke out of the dirt. Giant squares squat below—generators or magnetic field conductors or monstrous fucking batteries. The place hums with the power of ten thousand computers turning on at the same time. I see Dev’s Lexus idling in the lot. We are highly suspicious, sneaking around abandoned places at night with only the white light of our high beams to see by.

I fly across the gavel, sending rocks spitting as I slam on the breaks. “A late night rendezvous,” I say, springing free, and dashing towards the bulky figure that can only be Dev. “Plans for vandalism and destruction.”

“Fucking took you long enough,” he says as I jog up to where he’s kneeling, a giant duffle open at his feet. Filled with—

“You’re really got explosives,” I say, but I’m grinning.

“Did you think I was lying?” Dev asks. “You seemed serious about this, Baz. You’d better’ve been fucking serious.”

“I am.”

As I consider all that Dev’s risking by doing this, I can’t help but appreciate him.

“Don’t just stand there and look pretty,” Dev says, strolling towards the fence. I see razor wire coiling around the top, extreme icing ready to shred us on the way down. “Grab my shit and follow me.”

I let the arguments and the insults die on my tongue—there is enough barbed wired on that fence to both slice and dice the both of us. Dev, however, appears to be paying it no mind, and so I sling the duffle over my shoulder and follow.

“How are we getting in there?”

It’s dark, but I can see Dev’s white teeth brilliant against the night. “Everyone thinks you need to go over.” I look up and the angry barbs that would make mincemeat of my skin. “When all you need is a good bolt cutter.” And that’s when I see the device in his hands—it’s metal and looks like a giant pair of scissors or a punk version of Pac-Man. He clips the fence loops like he’s making a paper star.

“I’m…” _Impressed?_

“You don’t have to look so surprised,” he says.

“It’s not that,” I answer, and it’s the truth. “I just…I guess I had no idea you had such a rebellious streak in you, Devereaux.”

“Niall thinks it’s hot,” Dev mutters and I have no idea how to process that information. “We fixed all that, by the way.”

The question should be “ _fixed what?”_ but I’m getting the distinct impression that I’ve missed something and so instead I ask, “fixed how?”

“Well, I felt like shit for freaking. And I couldn’t really figure out the right way to explain that I don’t kiss just anyone. And like, I didn’t know how to apologize or whatever.”

I am still so confused but Dev doesn’t give time to linger in it.

“So, I pushed him against the side of my car and snogged him until he could barely stand.”

“Uh…” I don’t know the appropriate response to the discovery that your best mates are snogging. “Well done?”

“He certainly thought so,” Dev says, and I do not relish in the look that takes over his face.

“Let’s get back to the crimes,” I say, crawling through the improvised entrance. _I am across the threshold. I have officially broken and entered._ “Come on.”

Dev crawls through the very illegal hole and officially into unlawful trespassing.

“That thing is gonna fall, right?” He takes me by the arm, his stare laser focused. “For real?”

“For real,” I say, trying not to sound condescending when, really, all I’m feeling is grateful that he’s here and he showed up and he trusts me. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“You did, huh?” He’s still standing still as a stock photo, fixing me with all of that sincerity. “Well I guess it’s settled then. We’re officially criminals. Let’s go blow this place up.”

...

The speedometer is climbing, the comet is unzipping the heavens, and Dev has his window rolled all the way down. Niall’s voice is streaming out of Dev’s speakerphone on the dash.

“Once the town’s power goes out, the emergency generator should kick in right away. Use the town’s broadcast equipment once it does,” he’s shouting over the wind.

“Fuck. Fuck!” The panic is sharp and true. I can practically see Niall’s bent over the desk, head in his hands. 

“Don’t be scared, Niall,” I say, in my best reassuring voice (which I’m not convinced is soothing. I’m not well practiced in comfort). “Just repeat it as many times as you can before they find you.”

“Wait, who’s gonna find me!” His voice has climbed at least two octaves, but, if Dev registers that his…boyfriend? (I’m going to need to clarify things when this is all over) is distressed, he doesn’t comment on it. Just leans out the window and howls into the night.

“Woo!”

“Is Dev really whooping right now?” Niall says. My grin catches me by surprise. I don’t remember the last time I’ve done anything that could amount to bad behaviour.

“I think that answer to that is obvious,” I yell over the wind.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Shouldn’t it be going off?” I ask, glancing over at my cousin’s wild eyes. “You know. The bombs?”

“Hell, if I know,” Dev hollers. _Chomsky, I’ve put the fate of the town in the hands of my idiot cousin._

“Guys,” Niall’s panic bursts through the speaker. “Seriously, who’s coming to find me—”

We’re miles away from the power station and the sound still sucks all of the air from the interior. The boom is crushing, the countryside is shaking, and my ears are ringing as we flee the scene of a very real, very big crime. A red plume of fire and dust appears in the rearview, a gash against the night.

_We’re doing this. We’re actually doing this. There’s no going back now._

“Was that…” Niall’s voice is whispers and static.

Dev has the decency to look anxious, but it only lasts a breath. Because then he’s got half his torso out the window and is shouting at the sky. “You see that, you fucking murder rock! We’re gonna stop you. We’re gonna save this fucking town!”

_My god, I hope he’s right,_ is all I can think as I try to steady my shaking hands on the steering wheel. _This has to work. Please, god, let this work._

...

The Jag carves a path into town, going at least fifty kilometers over the speed limit. I slide into the city square and the car has barely stopped moving before Dev is out the door and I’m right on his heels.

Niall’s voice is blaring from the town’s emergency system, booming atop the din: “ **_This is Sandside town hall. Reports of an explosion from the substation are coming in. Wildfires are possible, as well as the threat of more explosions. Residents, please evacuate to Sandside high school immediately_ **.” Again and again on loop.

“This is really happening,” I gasp as I sprint through the night.

“Right, I’m gonna go up to the festival booths and start screaming my head off,” Dev says mid stride. “You go find pappa Grimm and convince him to start a formal evacuation.”

I nod and feel Dev’s hand close in on my shoulder. Tight. “Baz. I know things’ve been hard lately. But I want you to know. I believe you.” The comet is casting the entire world in blue.

Sentiment sticks in my throat, sarcasm desperate to blot it out, but tonight, I need him to know that, “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

His thick eyebrows furrow, resolve setting in. “Let’s fucking do this.” To the tune of an exploding sky and a soundtrack of Niall’s voice repeating and repeating, Dev takes off into the fray of lights and fried food and the celebrations. He doesn’t look back.

I barely break stride as I watch him go, my chest starting to ache as I I sprint up the lane, back to the fucking town hall, for a word with my father.

It’s not far from here. Not now. I’m made mostly of leg and so I’ll be there soon—

The sky is changing colour. Shifting from a gorgeous aurora of colour into something brighter. One star becomes hundreds and the meteor begins to break apart.

“It’s actually splitting,” I huff, still running, but staring up and up and up into a sky spattered in tiny lights. “I remember this. The view. There’s not much time now. That’s what he said. That’s—”

I try to hold onto the words we shared when Sandside started to melt, the things that he told me. “You’ve got about thirty minutes after it splits to get everyone outta there,” and “Baz, if you have to, please leave the town behind. Don’t die tonight.”

_No one’s dying tonight…_

It is in this moment, as my eyes are turned up to a sky that looks like galaxies painted over his skin, that I realize that I don’t remember his name.

“No.” It’s the only word that I can manage, and the only word that squeaks out. My mind is with him and my eyes are on the sky, and so I don’t see the crack in the pavement. My foot catches on an uneven patch of pavement—fucking Sandside, sinking into the sea—and I’m crashing, limb over limb, skull connecting hard with the ground. The sky is exploding above me and my head is exploding in miniature, dancing in front of my eyes as I lay in a heap in the dirt.

Any vestige of dignity has been lost to the grabby hands of the sidewalk. _His name! He told me I’d forget. He told me and I didn’t listen. I…_

My hand. Memories of a marker scratching against my skin. Of a boy with bronze hair and blue eyes. I curl up into myself and hold my hand up to my face.

He knew better. He knew. He…

The road has rubbed my skin raw and blood has started to pool, but I can still see the words. Scrawled in the world’s messiest handwriting. They’re a sloping mess of lazy loops and a shaky grip, but they are clear.

**_I love you._ **

A sob cracks my ribs open. I’m crying when I should be running, off to save the world, like a proper Chosen One, but I’ve never claimed to be the hero. “No. I needed your name. Your name.” To know this, to have proof of these three words and nothing else. 

_**I love you.** _

_He loves me._

And now…I’ll never be able to find him.

_He loves me._

The sky is a kaleidoscope of falling stars, most burning up in the atmosphere.

_He loves me._

He loves me and he wanted me to survive this. He gave up his magic to give me this chance. I can cry later. I can weep for the boy I lost to the sea. Later.

With a groan that feels like the last dregs of an empty fuel tank, I push myself up and limp towards city hall.

This night will not end in flames.

... 

The office is chaos. Daphne is flitting from desk to desk, hands dashing over papers, not moving or adding. I don’t know where father found a crowd of men in cheap suits, or a hundred ringing phones, or a thousand different people to call because it’s urgent, goddammit. Somehow, Malcolm has gathered together all the ingredients for panic and has set the room to purify. I walk in on disaster and I am not interested.

“Father,” I say, and I borrow his tone. I boom.

Everyone looks up as I push through the office, straight past that awful name plate that moved on too soon, behind the desk made for a Bond villain or a simple man trying to size up, and stride right up to him, all six feet of me managing to tower.

“Basil?”

“You have…” I crane my neck a bit, trying to keep the pain from my face, and look out the window. “Probably less than thirty minutes to evacuate everyone in Sandside. I think it’d be best for everyone if you stopped,” _what would he say?_ “dicking about and started getting people to safety.”

There is a very particular look for disappointed fathers. You can see it in the slope of a shoulder and in the stiffness of an upper lip. I can see it now in his downturned mouth, in his exasperated sigh, in eyes narrowed just enough to signal irritation without being outright menacing. “Not again, Basil.”

_Yes, again, father._ A conversation from a thousand years ago, where I stood outside this office and prayed for confidence, flashes before my eyes. So much has changed since then. I don’t need to send up a silent prayer to the universe for the strength to stand up to my father. I feel the square shoulders of a boy who fights with his fists standing behind me. I feel his bluster warming in my chest.

“Magic is not a dream. It’s not a religion or a joke. There _is_ magic here in Sandside. I’ve seen the comet fall. It’s going to hit the town and I need you to believe me. Believe in me. Just this once.”

I want him to hear and to trust and even to just remember the way that her eyes had lit up when she talked about dancing through time. I want him to be more than what he is.

But he’s just a man.

“Have you lost your mind?”

A few weeks ago, I think this may have broken me. But tonight, my confidence is made of freckles and golden curls and magic. I lean in, grey eyes staring into grey eyes, and I repeat my mother’s words back to him. “When you proposed, father, you were knee deep in the middle of the ocean.”

He tries to look away, but I hold him with a look. I am not finished. “She told you that she would hang the moon for your pleasure.”

“How…”

“Magic, father. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

I take a step back and release him.

His eyes are flitting from person to person, looking anywhere but me. That’s fine. I’m not finished.

“Nothing is going to bring her back. But she was made of magic. I’m sorry that you decided to live in a world where you missed that part of her. But now, you have the chance to save all of our lives. If you can’t play the hero for me,” I take what feels like my first breath in ages, “then do it for her.”

Malcolm Grimm stands up in a silent room. I feel the seconds inch closer to the original ending of this story. “I…” His voice isn’t booming now. It’s gravel and perspective. “Begin a full-scale evacuation immediately. Mandatory,” he says as the bodies start to scramble. “For all citizens.”

“Rendezvous at the high school,” I say, and my father echoes me to the room.

“With as much haste as can be managed,” he says. “It appears we have minutes, not hours, before something catastrophic descends on this town and I don’t want anyone caught in harm’s way when that occurs.”

**Simon, three years ago**

I haven’t been living here that long, but there’s lessons you learn if you bounce around a lot. Don’t be too loud. Don’t leave dishes behind. Don’t leave _any_ part of yourself behind, for that matter. If you aren’t seen, they can’t hurt you or break you. 

“ _Would you look at that. The comet has split into two large parts and meteors are now falling to earth. I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted this. The comet’s not within the roach limit so the nucleus must have had a structural weakness.”_

Davy’s face is bathed in blue light. “That comet,” he says, as I pass from the kitchen to my bedroom. “It’s split apart! Look!” He points to the screen. His life is screens. A revolution with no one to follow him, fought from the living room. One day, I’ll ask him for his story. Most people have one. Behind every shitty person I’ve ever met, there’s a story. One day, I’ll ask him his.

_“The fragments will likely burn up well before reaching the ground. The probability of a meteor actually landing on a populated area is quite small.”_

“I’m gonna go check it out on the balcony.” The _celestial event of the century_ is on display in the sky for all to see if you can just look up.

Davy, though, is glued to his sofa chair. Determined to see the world through a filter. 

“Whatever.”

_“As we stand here witnessing this spectacle unassisted and with our bare eyes, it strikes me that living in such an age has never felt more magical than now._ ”

Stepping through the door and pushing it closed behind me feels like an escape, like a breath of privacy in this moment. 

And what a moment.

The sky is wide awake at night. The clouds are the curtains for the show, hanging back while the main event dazzles unabashed.

Purples and greens and whites glance off a thousand glass windows. The world, for once, is standing still. Traffic has stopped, people are in the street, all heads turned up.

As the wind sneaks its cold fingers through my curls, I feel like the world is exploding, and I reach up to try and touch it. Like whatever fucked up magic lives inside of me is up there too, crashing through the atmosphere. It’s a hole I can’t fill. It feels like the home I can’t find.

_No._

Not a hole. Not a home.

_It’s nothing more and nothing less than a beautiful view._


	17. His Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, friends, is the final official chapter of this story. The ending, proper. I just want to use this little space to thank you all for taking a chance on this strange fic. It was a bit of a niche concept and even I'm surprised at how well it turned out. A thousand thank yous will never be enough <3  
> I am writing an epilogue that takes place several years after the main events of the story, but it is more bonus content and less essential reading (and nowhere near finished). Saying goodbye to this story has been a bit hard for me. Stay tuned for that (eventually).
> 
> A final note: I know that the second chapter of this fic is a little dreamy and confusing (thank you for pushing through). This chapter is meant to pay that off. Their lives, blank to begin with, finally shaded in.  
> Happy reading :)

Five years after Simon went to Sandside

**Baz**

Sometimes, I see someone else in my reflection.

Flashes of blue and tawny skin in the pan.

…and peacock boxers, which I know I wouldn’t be caught dead in. And yet…

I let myself look, stare straight into the mirror and try to make the uncanny feeling add up to something. I fix my mother’s cord in my hair, completing the messy bun (a mess that is careful and on-purpose) and turn away. The sigh that parts my lips feels like a story coming down from its climax, the final denouement in a play that should have had five acts but still feels stuck somewhere in three.

It’s almost as if…

I am living my life in tandem with someone else?

_Maybe. Maybe someone with soft golden curls._

As if a ghost is placing a hand on the small of my back, tugging my feet into a waltz I never intended.

_Maybe. Maybe a ghost with plain blue eyes._

As if molecules that are striving to manifest some kind of potential, but never manage to exist in enough dimensions.

_Closer. Closer to the man who walks the edge of the ocean in my dreams. That place where the sand meets the sea._

I shuffle into my kitchen—empty but for me. There’s never really been anyone else. I always fail to extend the expiration date of a relationship past casual. Loneliness is a burden sometimes, but companionship always feels like a step too far. Like I’m shoehorning someone else into my life, and they’re never going to fit. 

I let my hand linger over the element and turn on the gas. Flames dance from my fingertips.

Magic. Just a little. In a world that’s moved on.

_Once in a while, when I wake up, I find myself crying._

**Simon**

_Once in a while, when I wake up, I’m crying._

There’s a film of dirt across the bathroom mirror; I can still make out my face if I squint. The skin around my eyes is the consistency of puff pastry. And the suit. Fuck, I hate wearing suits. No one ever showed me how. 

Sometimes, I’m sure I see someone else looking back at me in the mirror. Smooth skin, a jawline I want to trace with my fingertips…

…and the smell of earl grey tea…

But that might just be me, fantasizing about food again (that happens a lot more than you’d think). And yet…

I don’t know who or how or why, but I know it means something, even if I can’t quite describe what _it_ is.

My flat’s a mess, the walls a patchwork of sketches in various states of completion. Penny tolerates what she calls my “obsessive need to bring the outside in” in exchange for my occasional and explosive forays into baked goods. “The cinnamon buns make it worth it.”

Learning to step out of my room and into the kitchen, to accept the concept of a shared space—a space that can be both someone else’s and also mine—was tough at first. But Penny, in that way she has, persisted.

She’s left for work for the day, and so I dash around the kitchen with the grace of an especially hungry kangaroo. I pull the instant coffee from the cupboard, tossing a tablespoon into my travel mug and pop a piece of bread in the toaster. I’m about to set the kettle to boil when I see the analog numbers on the microwave shouting out the time.

8:02.

“Fuck a nine toed troll,” I whisper and then wonder why. There’s not anything wrong with having nine toes, really. No time to watch the kettle boil.

I toss a dash of water into my mug from the sink and then hold my hand over the rim.

My magic sparks inside my chest. It’s nothing like it was before. Less a giant and more an atom, less an ocean and more a raindrop. Less the sun and more like a match.

I don’t know how this happened or where the rest went. Maybe I was going through some kind of magical puberty and the raging monster hormones just…passed.

_Wherever it went, I didn’t hurt anyone._ And that’s what counts.

There’s not much left now. Just enough for little things like heating coffee when I’m running late or turning on the telly if I can’t find the remote.

I like to feel it. Sometimes, it’s like swallowing thick smoke, the kind you get when you burn something green, and sometimes it’s like swallowing cough syrup on fire. When I use it, I almost feel like I’m brushing up against that feeling. The one without words.

It’s almost like all of the “what ifs” of my life somehow merged together.

_Maybe. Maybe it has something to do with long dark hair._

Almost like the puzzle of my life is one piece short.

_Maybe. Maybe it’s those grey eyes that won’t look away every time I go to sleep._

Almost like the possibility of my life was never shaded in.

_Closer. Closer to the man who haunts my dreams, coming in and out with the waves. Sand eroding definition._

Whatever it is hits me hardest in the morning. Right after I’ve woken up.

I press the lid down onto my mug and lock the flat behind me, all the while trying to convince myself that this interview will be different. I fucking hate this suit.

_The dream I must’ve had...I can never remember._

**Baz**

_The dream I must’ve had...I can never recall._

The sensation that I’ve lost something lingers for a long time after I wake up. Almost like the world I travel to when my brain shuts down is greater than the sum of its synapses.

It can be distracting, can make real life feel somehow less relevant.

“Baz, are you even listening?”

Like now.

Dev and Niall are sitting in front of me, with matching looks of disappointment. “I’m sorry. Didn’t sleep well,” I offer and the sternness in their frowns soften a little.

“This is one of those important things in life,” Dev starts and he sounds so serious, I almost don’t recognize him. “We wanted to tell you in person.”

“Alright,” I say, a bit cautiously. These two have only amplified each other’s worst tendencies since having the audacity to fall in love and leaving me a hopeless third wheel—constantly spinning and gaining no traction in the romance department that they managed to perfect on their first go.

“We’d like you to be our best man,” Niall says.

“You know,” Dev says, gesturing between the two of them and nearly knocking his coffee onto the floor. I’d wondered if some variation of this conversation was coming—Dev proposed last week. It was a strange combination of a cappella, Queen songs, and a semi-public profession of his love. “Both of our best man.”

“How—” I start, but they have all the answers ready.

“I didn’t want anyone else,” Niall says. “And Dev said he’d accept no one but you—”

“I said that you were family and I should get first dibs—”

“And I panicked…about convention and…and tradition and all that,” Niall stammers.

Dev covers Niall’s hand with his. “His concern was adorable.”

“And then we decided that convention could—

“Go fuck itself,” Dev finishes. “Would you be up for it? Double duty as best man. The very best man?”

I look at these two, Niall’s cheeks and Dev’s reckless sincerity, and I can’t help the way my chest tightens. _Good fucking men._ “It would be an honour,” I say and I mean it from the bottom of my toes.

_I want this,_ I think as I see their faces start to glow and that fucking feeling (that dreamy mess that crowds the back of my mind) creeps back in.

I can feel the dream hiding behind corners, peeking at me from the edge of the frame. Something I know is there, but that I can never see. Sneaking into my everyday from somewhere off screen.

A flash of gold catches my eyes and I can’t help it—I flinch, twisting my head around to catch the source before he’s gone again.

I’m rewarded with the back of someone’s head. Lovely shoulders and a spattering of freckles that’s familiar. The people I have managed to date are always copper haired and well freckled and for a minute, I think it’s one of those brief exes that flitted in and out of my life.

By the time I’ve decided I should find out, he’s gone.

_I’m always searching. For something. For someone_.

**Simon**

_I’m always searching. For something? For someone_?

Maybe it’s one of those glass half-empty phenomenons. As if the plot points of my life never really added up to much, didn’t generate enough rising action to merit a happy ending.

“Simon!” Agatha shouts as I walk up the pavement. She’s as lovely as the first day I met her, white-blonde hair catching in the sunlight.

“Nice to see you Aggie,” I shout as I jog towards her. “What’s with the sudden text?”

“I was in your end of town and it’d been too long,” she said, giving me one of her real smiles. It’s so different from the ones she used to offer guests back when we worked together—it’s bigger, with more teeth and less restraint. I’ve learned to spot the difference.

We fall into step, picking up right where we left off the last time I saw her. Agatha’s like that. She’s the kind of friend who will save the page. And she’s right. It has been too long.

“Do you remember that one time when we went all the way out to Sandside?” she asks through a mouthful of milk foam. “You were in high school, so it was…”

“Five years ago.”

“That long.” She pauses, looking out over the river. “It feels like a thousand years ago.”

She’s right. It does.

“Weren’t you looking for some online boyfriend?”

_Was I?_

“I honestly don’t remember.”

I’m not meaning to avoid her questions. My cheeks are red and I can feel the embarrassment lighting me up like a ripe tomato, but I really don’t remember much about those days.

I know we went out there together. I know I was looking for someone. And I know that I left Agatha and Penny behind and spent the night on some mountain. Maybe we argued. They went back to London without me. 

“You were obsessed with Sandside,” Agatha says, and even though I can hear her voice, I still feel like I have one foot in the past.

I open my mouth to argue, but there’s really no other word for it. The days after we got back, I was drowning. The world felt like it was under the ocean and I couldn’t breathe. And so I inhaled articles and books, magazines and threads—anything about the disaster from three years ago.

A fragment of the comet HumDrum11 destroyed Sandside, but most of the people living there were unharmed. The town happened to be holding an emergency evacuation drill that day. Most of the residents were outside the impact zone.

The sheer luck and coincidence of it sparked various conspiracy theories.

“Aliens!” Penny insisted.

“It’s not—”

“Time travelling wizards!”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

But most of the rumours and gossip that made their way into print spoke about old magic and superstitions.

“Can you believe it? Some people still think they can wave a magic wand and make the world do their bidding.” Penny’d been incensed. And I’d been…

Fixated.

As if I was looking for someone in the pages of newsprint, amongst the text and photos of every online article, would make the emptiness in my chest fill in.

“Simon, are you listening?” Agatha’s voice isn’t angry; she knows I have the attention span of a flea and forgives me on the regular.

“What? Yeah!” I say, but then my eyes latch on to someone walking the other way, just past Aggie, and moving in a hurry. His dark hair is almost as shiny as her blonde, and the contrast is striking.

“Some things never change,” she says wryly and she’s right again.

The ache of unrequited and unknowable. It hasn’t gone away.

I think about chasing him down, chasing that feeling and trying to grab a hold of it, but I let it lie.

_The feeling’s been with me, I think, from that day. The day the stars came falling._

**Baz**

_This feeling has possessed me, I think from the day. That day when the stars came falling._

I did not think that the London underground would appeal to me—not at first. The cramped quarters and the total lack of decorum and an appreciation for personal space are not my optimal travelling conditions (the day a woman placed her two-year-old in my lap, unprompted and without request, while she took a phone call stands out as a definitive point in the trains-are-a-shit-means-of-transport column) (the child promptly defecated in his nappy) (it was the worst day of my life). Still, I can’t deny the sense of relief that washes over me as I step through the sliding doors.

I’ve never been able to explain it—the emotions feel so foreign, almost as if they belong to someone else. But I know that, if all the other places in London had closed their doors to me, these ones would still open. Would spirit me away to somewhere else. And there is a kind comfort in that.

I tried explaining this to Dev once, following far too many glasses of red.

After a long pause, and a grunt that betrayed how far from sobriety we truly were, he finally said, “I think you might just be lonely, mate.”

My god, I hate when he’s right.

There are days when I think I can forget every plunge into the uncanny valley of my _feelings_ and just move along. Today, though, the train car feels like I’m sharing a room with an open fire.

It doesn’t help that there must be almost one hundred people crammed into this single carriage. The smell of damp socks and stale cigarettes are only the first in a bouquet of options. Someone could bottle this damp disaster and brand it Commuter Chic.

Still, that ineffable feeling is thick in the air.

It feels close.

Close enough to touch.

The carriage is listless, lurching left and right and I’m not sure I can take much more of this. My heart is in my mouth. _I’ll get off at the next stop,_ I promise myself and try to swallow it down.

It’s so fucking overwhelming, I barely notice the man in the cheap suit, jacket soaked and draped over one arm. I would’ve missed him entirely if it hadn’t been for the curls. Even in the bowels of the city, they still find light to catch.

The train slows. Stops. A tide of bodies has me in its thrall and pulls me through the entrance and out onto the platform. I watch the doors close on plain blue eyes.

Blue eyes that I know.

Blue eyes that explode with recognition.

Blue eyes that know me!

_I wasn’t searching for something. It was always someone._

**Simon**

_It was never something. It was someone!_

Everything felt strange and wobbly the moment I got on the train. Like I was sharing a room with a siren. The whole world was vibrating so fast, it almost made me sick.

_I need to get off._

The doors close, synthetic air sealing me in, trapping me behind glass as he stares and stares and stares.

And there they are.

Those same grey eyes.

“Fuck!” I try to pry the doors open with my bare hands. They don’t budge. _Of course they don’t._ The darkness whisks the dream away, but I won’t be fucking stopped.

Not this time.

Memories. They’re taking shape. He washes in with the sea. _A fight against time, a dance with a ghost, a kiss at twilight._ His name. What’s his name?

“Let me off!” I howl, announcing my desperation to the world. Everyone is looking but the train’s already moving.

A woman with thick black bangs places a single hand gently on my shoulder. “You can just get off at the next one.”

**Baz**

He’ll get off at the next one.

He has to.

The memories are parading around in my head, each one striving to make more noise than the next. A nostalgic marching band singing the tune of my lost history.

_He came to meet me. He wrapped my mother’s cord around my wrist and called it destiny._

I refuse to stand still. My life is a dance for two and I’m not waiting on the edge of this sweaty floor.

_He’ll get off at the next one._ I’m running, before my mind has time to decide, taking the escalator three steps at a time, long legs gobbling up the distance.

_I stood with him under a burning sky._

And now… _he_ is the star stuff closing in.

_He’s_ a part of the universe that has no business being this close.

_He_ is magic. Unquestionably.

There is no waiting.

_He is a man from my dreams._

**Simon**

_He’s something out of a dream._

“I don’t think pressing your face against the window will make the door open any faster—” the woman with the fringe is cut off by the hydraulic hisses as the car settles in, and I’m off, sprinting like my life depends on it.

In a way, maybe it does.

Because I kissed him as the world was ending. I kissed him because I wanted him to be alive. I kissed him and I never thought I’d forget.

I’m through the turnstile, dashing across shiny tile, and up and up and outside. There are people everywhere, and I don’t understand how they can move so slowly. _He’s gotta be here._ Faces shuffle along to the daily grind, unmoved by my mania. 

_Because I told him that I loved him. I did. I do._

I poured my magic into him. We saw the stars.

And he left a piece behind.

Cough syrup on fire. A match inside my heart.

I take a deep breath and blow on the tinder.

And then I let my feet find their way.

**Baz**

The sunlight is brilliantly oppressive, but I’m barely paying attention. My eyes aren’t doing the work right now. It’s my feet, dashing out and onward, up from the bowels of the city and over the pavement.

A group of teenage girls laugh, a cabbie honks, the crosswalk turns and the bodies start to filter.

There’s smoke in my blood and magic in my feet and I don’t think I could stop if I wanted to.

_He danced through time to find me, he met me at the edge of the world._

I dart down a residential street and the crowds start to thin. The houses are squat. There are weeds pushing up out of the pavement. 

_When time was running out, he scribbled his love all over my palm._

I want to scream his name into the sky—the last word of this story still redacted.

_What was his name?_

**Simon**

I want to drag him to me with the sound of my voice—my need made into the single word I need but can’t remember. 

_What was his name?_

The busy streets fade into something more residential. Into grubby houses and messy lawns. I’ve got on foot in the city and one foot in the past.

That day when the stars came falling, I felt like the world was exploding, and I reached up to try and touch it. Like whatever fucked up magic lived inside of me was up there too, crashing through the atmosphere. It was a hole I couldn’t fill. It felt like the home I couldn’t find.

My feet slow and settle at the bottom of a set of stone steps. Drooping power lines and a few sagging shops huddle to watch.

Watch me look up

and see him. Long dark hair. Cheekbones casting elegant lines. A full mouth smoothed into something thoughtful.

_Fucking hell._

He stands there, the wind running its fingers through his hair, and the whole city is holding its breath.

**Baz**

I’m at the top of a set of stone steps, looking down at...

Him. 

He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The first time, the last time, every time. 

Golden hair, white light playing across his features, something damp in his eyelashes.

I’m ten years old again, standing on the edge of the world, terrified that I’m going to fall in.

My resolve settles into something solid—steel and plexiglass, because nothing is going to keep me from him—and I take the first step. And then the second.

Denouement. 

Possibility shaded in.

_I found him._

**Simon**

_I found him._

I want to run, to trip over myself, to fall up into his arms. Nosebleeds and bruises be dammed. There’s a pull like a hook in my gut and it takes everything I have not to just give in and dash.

I hold on to my self control. One foot at a time. One step. I’ve lost him before: to fire and falling stars, to the threads of time, to my fucking dreams. All I need to do is take one step. And then another.

Until he settles onto the step above me, a stranger who has never been a stranger, who has known every part of me and still managed to find me.

_He’s here._

Dark hair shuffling in the wind, those grey eyes letting me see how much he wants...

…me.

“I…I don’t…” But words were never going to be enough.

The world is upside-down. The inverse of the stories we told before, threading the loop, and bringing me back here.

Where one of his lovely hands reaches up and brushes my cheek.

Where he takes me by the back of my neck.

And where _he_ kisses _me_.

No fists. Just hands. Two hands. And they’re finally enough.

**Baz**

His lips melt into mine. _How did I ever forget these lips?_

His hands scramble against my back, pulling me closer, wrapping me in strong arms and heat. _How did I ever forget these arms?_

I want. I want him like I’ve never wanted anything. I try to cover him, letting my hands push back a stray curl, then tracing a finger down along his neck, letting my hands smooth those square shoulders into something soft, hands greedy for muscle and the softness of his skin.

My want is so singular, I forget where we are and what we’re doing. 

_But I don’t forget, how did I ever forget_ —

“Your name,” I whisper against his mouth. “Is Simon Snow.” The name of a storybook hero.

He’s smiling but he hasn’t stopped kissing me.

“Basilton Pitch,” he says, and I feel him speak the words into me.

“Where have you been all my life?” I ask, pressing my lips against his ear and savouring the way he shivers.

“Looking for you.” And he does. He looks. 

For the first time since that day, when the stars came falling, I am not walking through a dream. 

Plain blue eyes and forgotten tears look up at me—always up, by at least three inches—and I fall into him. _Nothing more,_ I decide, _and nothing less than a beautiful view._

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr!  
> [amywaterwings](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/amywaterwings/)


End file.
